WILLIAM THE TACITURN 



TRANSLATED BY J. P. LACROIX. 



L. A B E L O IT S. 



TWO ILLUSTRATIONS- 



No man, not even "Washington, has ever been inspired by a purer 
patriotism. — Motley. 





NEW YORK: - , 
NELSON & PHILLIPS. 

CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & "WALDEN. 

SUNDAY* SCHOOL 0EPAKTHENT. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 

NELSON & PHLLIIPS, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 




PREFACE 



HIS biography, like our previous little 



work, Gustavus Adolphus, is intended for 
youth or adults, rather than for children. 

History, it seems to us, does not, without 
losing something of its true character, admit of 
that playful tone, that familiarity, and those 
gaudy colors which are so pleasing to childhood. 
We regard it as dangerous to introduce into 
reality the language of fiction. We do not think 
it wise to change the form of facts in order to 
render them more interesting or more dramatic. 
We sympathize with Fenelon in his dislike to 
history "all powdered and frizzed;'' and we 
think "that it is sufficiently ornamented when 
the historian combines in it the proper order of 
the facts with a clear, pure, sententious, and 
noble diction." 

But these qualities alone do not suffice. His- 
tory should be not merely a narration, easily re- 




6 



Preface. 



membered because of the selection and combi- 
nation of the facts ; it is also, and most impor- 
tant of all, the best and most inspiring of les- 
sons/' There is no recital," says Vinet, " which 
do not contain instruction. To narrate is to 
judge." 

Such are the maxims which have influenced 
us in preparing this little work. We shall be 
happy if, in endeavoring to follow them, we have 
been useful to those who are fond of serious read- 
ing, and who seek in a rapid portrayal of events, 
or in the portraits of great men, a means of in- 
struction as • well as of recreation.* — Trans- 
lator. 

5 The authorities from which the author has constructed 
this biography are the general histories of the epoch and vari- 
ous collections of contemporary correspondence and archives. 
He has also freely consulted and used the special works of 
Achiller, Quinet, Esquiros, and Motley. — Translator. 



OO^TE^TS. 



CHAPTER I. 
William of Orange at the abdication of Charles V. — His 
family — His residence at the Court of the Emperor — His 
talents and his popularity — Hostility, to him of Philip II. P. 13 

CHAPTER II. 
New measure of Philip II. against the Protestants of the 
Netherlands — Opposition of William — His religious senti- 
ments at this period — Ceremony of his marriage with Anna 
of Saxony 25 

CHAPTER III. 
Granvelle and the Inquisition — Exasperation of the people 

— Revolt of Valenciennes — William demands the recall of 
Cardinal Granvelle 38 

CHAPTER IV. 
Zeal of William for the public good — Outbreak at Antwerp 

— Decrees of the Council of Trent — The Prince of Orange 
opposes them — Obstinacy of the King — A prediction of 
William 46 



8 



Contents. 



chapter v. 

Proclamation of the Decrees of the Council of Trent — Agita- 
tion in the Provinces — Attitude of William of Orange — 
Request of the Nobles — Origin of the Gueux — Field- 
preaching — Intervention of the Prince at Antwerp. . Page 59 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Iconoclasts — The Prince of Orange expels them from 
Antwerp — Perfidy of the Regent — Vigilance of William 
— Conference at Termonde — Position of the Prince — He 
represses new troubles at Antwerp 71 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Prince of Orange resigns — His interview with Count 
Egmont — His voluntary exile in Germany — His spiritual 
conversion — Cruelties of Alva in the Netherlands — Sacri- 
fices and courage of William in the interest of the Prov- 
inces — His submissiveness to Providence 82 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Prince of Orange enters upon a campaign — He is defeat- 
ed and passes into France — His relations with Coligny — He 
returns to Germany — His poverty — His constancy — Song 
of the Gneux — Capture of Brill — Risings in several Prov- 
inces — Toleration of the Prince 96 

CHAPTER IX. 
New campaign of William — Meeting of the States-General 
at Dort — Liberality of the Provinces — Orange, elected Dicta- 
tor, limits his power — He captures Roermond — He cen- 



Contents 



9 



sures the reprisals of his soldiers — His success checked by 
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew— His disaster before 
Mons — He retreats into Holland Page 109 



CHAPTER X. 

The Spaniards besiege Harlem — Courage of the inhabit- 
ants, and efforts of Orange to succor them — Capture of the 
place — Sentiments of William — His exhortations to the 
citizens of Alkmaar — Resistance and triumph of this little 
town 124 



CHAPTER XI. 

Negotiations of William with France — New address to the 
States-General of the Netherlands — Naval victory of the 
patriots — The Prince of Orange communes for the first time 
in a Reformed Church — Policy of the successor of Alva — 
Military plan of William — Defeat and death of his brother 
Lewis — Letter of his mother 138 



CHAPTER XII. 

Siege of Leyden — Plans of the Prince of Orange for reliev- 
ing the place — Heroic defense of the population ■ — Sickness 
and self-sacrifice of William — Delays of the patriotic fleet 
* — Troubles in the city and courage of the Burgomaster 
— Retreat of the Spaniards and entrance of Admiral Boisot 
into Leyden — Visit of the Prince and foundation of the 
University 152 



IO 



Contents. 



chapter XIII. 

Requesens proposes peace — Firmness of the Prince of Or- 
ange — Union of Holland and Zeeland under his authority — 
His marriage with Charlotte of Bourbon — Success of the Span- 
iards — Rejection of the authority of Philip by the Deputies 
of Holland and Zeeland — Fruitless negotiations with En- 
gland — Death of Requesens — Pacification of Ghent. Page 167 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Don John — His flatteries — - William unmasks him — Per- 
petual edict — The Prince opposes it — The Governor endeav- 
ors in vain to corrupt him — Conferences at Gertruydenburg 
— Energy and skill of William — Execution of a Prot- 
estant 181 



CHAPTER XV. 

The Prince of Orange makes a tour of Holland and Zeeland 
— Enthusiasm of the people — He writes to the States-Gen- 
eral in regard to Don John — His visit to Brussels — ■ Jeal- 
ousy of the Nobles — He is appointed Ruart — War recom- 
mences—The "close union" of Brussels — Defeat at Gem- 
blours — Indignation of the people — Prudent conduct of 
William — His efforts for religious peace — Resumption of 
hostilities — Death of Don John 196 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Alexander of Parma — His policy — Religious discord in the 
Provinces — Defection of the Catholic Provinces — William 
effects the "union" of Utrecht — Capture and sack of 



Contents. 



Maestricht by the Spaniards — Calumnies against Orange — 
Nobleness and dignity of his defense — He restores order at 
Ghent — He advocates the election of the Duke of x\njou as 
sovereign of the country — His fresh reverses — Public ban 
pronounced against him — His " Apology Page 209. 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Act of abjuration — William accompanies the Duke of Anjou 
into the Provinces — His views of this Prince — Attempt on 
his life at Antwerp — He is severely wounded — Dangerous- 
ness of his condition — His recovery — Death of his wife 
Charlotte — His definitive appointment as Count of Holland 

— New plot against his life at Ghent — He thwarts the expe- 
dition of Alexander against this city. 226 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Treason of the Duke of Anjou — Slight conflict at Antwerp 

— Letter of William to the States-General pleading for the 
Duke — William refuses the sovereignty of the Netherlands 

— His sojourn at Delft — Death of the Duke of Anjou — 
Assassination of the Prince of Orange by Balthazar Gerard — 
Antecedents and cunning of this man — Consequences of his 
crime — Character and genius of the Taciturn 242 



The Burgomaster of Leyden 2 

William the Taciturn Surprised by the Enemy. 118 



WILLIAM THE TACITURN. 



William of Orange at the abdication of Charles V. — His fam- 
ily — His residence at the Court of the Emperor — His 
talents and popularity — Hostility to him of Philip II. 



HE 25th of October, 1555, was a day of 



4- lively interest for Brussels. The people 
crowded en masse to the palace of the ancient 
Dukes of Brabant, in which the States-General 
of the Netherlands were assembled to receive 
the solemn abdication of their sovereign, who 
had chosen this, his native country, as the 
theater of the last act of his long and mighty 
reign. It was a spectacle such as is rarely seen, 
to behold the master of the New World and of 
one half of Europe (namely, of Austria, of the 
Two Sicilies, of Spain, and of the seventeen 
Dutch and Flemish provinces) publicly re- 
nounce the first throne of the world, and ex- 
change imperial power for the solitude of a 
convent. 



CHAPTER I. 




14 William the Taciturn. 

The great audience-room, where the deputies 
had seats reserved, was crowded at an early 
hour. In front of the seats of the deputies had 
been constructed a spacious platform, over the 
center of which stood a magnificent canopy, 
and under this tent of purple and gold stood 
three richly-gilded arm-chairs. 

At three o'clock Charles V. made his ap- 
pearance, supported on his crutch, and on the 
shoulder of a tall and beautiful young man, 
magnificently dressed, and with a fine forehead 
and thoughtful air. He was accompanied by 
his sister Mary, the regent of the Netherlands, 
and his son Philip II., the heir of his crown ; 
and these were followed by a brilliant cortege 
of princes, grandees, and high dignitaries. 

The assembly immediately arose, in saluta- 
tion of the Emperor and his court. He made a 
sign, and all resumed their seats. He himself, 
with Philip and Mary, occupied the gilded chairs, 
and then patiently listened to a verbose ha- 
rangue by a member of the Privy Council of the 
Netherlands, who even treated him to a descrip- 
tion of the gout, of the horrible pains of which 
his hands, his knees, and his deformed limbs 
only too vividly reminded him already. He re- 



William the Taciturn. 15 

sponded to this discourse in an upright posture, 
and supported, as in entering the hall, on his 
crutch and on the same young grandee. 

He spoke of his affection for the Netherlands, 
of his devotion to his duties, of the victories, 
labors, and results of his career, and of the 
prosperous state of his immense empire. He 
closed by beseeching the States-General, as rep- 
resentatives of the nation, to transfer to his 
son the attachment and loyalty which they had 
shown him, and of which he would constantly 
make mention in the prayers which he would 
offer to Him to whom he was going to conse- 
crate the remnant of his life. 

After these words he resumed his seat, and 
then, in the midst of the profound emotion of 
all present, placed his hands upon the head of 
his son, who had prostrated himself at his feet, 
and, making the sign of the cross, blessed him 
in the name of the Holy Trinity. Thereupon 
he raised him up and embraced him. 

Philip, with his pale visage, his slight form, and 
his unsteady and sinister look, became now the 
object of attention. He pronounced a few 
woTds with timidity and embarrassment, and, 
excusing himself for not being able to address 



1 6 William the Taciturn. 

the States-General in their own language, 
begged them to listen to the Bishop of Arras, 
whom he had chosen as the interpreter of his 
sentiments. The discourse of the prelate, and 
then a response by a member of the States- 
General accepting the abdication in the name 
of the body for which he spoke, and, finally, an 
allocution of the Regent, resigning her charge to 
her nephew and taking leave of those whose 
affairs she had ministered, completed the cere- 
mony. The Emperor then adjourned the ses- 
sion and slowly left the hall, still supported by 
the arm of William of Orange. 

This young man, who had the privilege of 
serving as a support to the feebleness of 
Charles V., was destined one day to be the main- 
spring of the revolution of the Netherlands. 

He belonged to one of the most illustrious 
houses of that country. This family, originat- 
ing in Germany, where it possessed the modest 
Duchy of Nassau, whose name it bore, had for 
awhile disputed the pre-eminency of the house 
of Austria, and given a chief to the German 
empire. It counted among its ancestors the 
Dukes of Guelders, who had handed down to it 
vast domains in the Netherlands. Besides, it 



William the Taciturn. 17 

had inherited, as the result of a marriage, the 
little principality of Orange, in the south of 
France, near Avignon. 

The father of William being a younger son, 
had inherited only the estates in Germany ; 
while his elder brother, Henry, held the estates 
in the Netherlands and those in France, with 
the title of Prince of Orange. He was one 
among the first German princes who espoused 
the cause of Protestantism. His wife, Julia, 
Countess of Stolberg, carefully trained her chil- 
dren in piety. And the Christian education 
which they received was not lost upon them ; 
the good seed of the Gospel sprang up in later 
years under the pressure of trial, and bore rich 
fruit in their hearts. Their mother continued, 
while absent as well as with them, to exert 
upon them a blessed influence. The letters 
which she wrote to them during the dangerous 
phases of their stormy career are inspired with 
the most touching simplicity and the deepest 
faith. She speaks to them in the same manner 
as when, seated upon her knees, she had for- 
merly exhorted them to submission to and trust 
in that heavenly Father whose holy name she 
taught their young lips to utter. Among the 



1 8 William the Taciturn. 



mothers of great men, Julia of Stolberg deserves 
a foremost place, and it is no slight eulogy that 
she was worthy to have been the mother of 
William of Orange. 

At the age of eleven years, William having, by 
the death of his cousin-german, become Prince 
of Orange and possessor of all the goods of the 
Nassau family in the Netherlands, was called 
to the court of Charles V., of whom he had by 
this unexpected inheritance become a vassal. 
He therefore quit his home at Dillenburg in 
Germany, and entered as a page into the house- 
hold of the Emperor at Brussels. 

In allowing their son thus to leave his pater- 
nal home, the parents of 'William had greater 
respect to their worldly position than to their 
religious principles ; or perhaps they counted too 
much on the tolerance which Charles V., from 
force of circumstances, practiced in Germany. 
But the effect of this course was soon apparent : 
the young page soon abandoned the religion of 
- his parents, and went over to that of his pro- 
tector. The Emperor, with his usual penetra- 
tion, soon divined the genius of the young 
Prince. Impressed with his precocious ma- 
turity, with his remarkable judgment, and with 



William the Taciturn. 19 

his perfect discretion, "he honored him/' says 
Schiller, "with a confidence far beyond what 
his age would ordinarily justify. He kept him 
about his person when giving audience to for- 
eign embassadors, a circumstance which proves 
that William had begun from his very youth to 
merit the designation Taciturn, which he was 
destined afterward to render immortal. Charles 
V. did not even blush to confess once, on a 
public occasion, that this youth often gave to 
him suggestions which would have escaped his 
own sagacity." 

In this school of the greatest statesmen of 
the age, William developed to rich maturity his 
rare faculties. He was early initiated into all 
the double-dealing of courts, and saw with his 
own eyes the secret springs of worldly politics. - 
He acquired a taste for those tortuous proced- 
ures, for that diplomacy, more ingenious than 
honest, which practices only too well the maxim 
of the Jesuits, that the end justifies the means. 
It is to these lessons of Charles V. that must be 
attributed some of the acts of the prince, which 
any thing but a blind admiration must regard 
as blemishes in his otherwise beautiful life. But 

although, from this contact with Spanish craft- 

2 



20 William the Taciturn. 

iness, losing somewhat in candor, on the other 
hand he gained thereby that acquaintance with 
men and that knowledge of affairs which con- 
tributed subsequently so powerfully in the pro- 
motion of the rights of conscience and of the 
independence of a nation. This is not the first 
time that Providence, in the accomplishment of 
his wise purposes, has brought good out of evil, 
as light from the darkness. 

On attaining to the age of maturity William 
received signal marks of imperial esteem. He 
was appointed general-in-chief of the army that 
guarded the French frontier, where he was 
matched against commanders no less expe- 
rienced than able, such as Coligny and the Duke 
of Nevers. It was from this important and 
perilous post that Charles V. had recalled him, 
to be present at his own abdication. He was 
now twenty-two years of age ; and, in addition 
to his high military functions, he had been 
chosen, to the exclusion of all the other grandees 
of the court, for the important mission of bear- 
ing to Ferdinand of Austria the imperial crown 
which his illustrious brother, from weariness 
rather than from dislike for the dignity, no 
longer desired to wear. 



William the Taciturn. 21 



The new King of the Netherlands, Philip II., 
had no liking- for William. His jealous and 
distrustful disposition led him to fear and to 
hate a fortune so brilliantly rising and talents 
so distinguished. He did not dare, however, 
to manifest his antipathy without some manner 
of pretext, and he even drew profit from the 
diplomatic ability of the young prince in con- 
cluding with France the treaty of Cateau-Cam- 
bresis. This peace, entirely to the advantage 
of Spain, w r as largely the work of William of 
Orange. But Philip, notwithstanding this great 
service, instead of confiding to him, as would 
have been very appropriate, the government of 
the Netherlands, preferred to him the Duchess 
Margaret of Parma,* a natural daughter of 
Charles V. He associated with her as prime 
minister that same Bishop of Arras who, on the 

* " Margaret was about thirty-seven years of age when she 
arrived in the Netherlands, with the reputation of possessing 
high talents, and a proud and energetic character. She was 
an enthusiastic Catholic, and had sat at the feet of Loyola, 
who had been her confessor and spiritual guide. She felt a 
greater horror for heretics than for any other species of male- 
factors, and looked up to her father's bloody edicts as if they 
had been special revelations from on high. She was most 
strenuous in her observance of Roman rites, and was accus- 
tomed to wash the feet of twelve virgins every holy week, and 
to endow them in marriage afterward/' — Motley. 



22 William the Taciturn. 

day of the abdication, had spoken to the people 
in Philip's name. It was this priest, in fact, who 
was designed to govern the Netherlands accord- 
ing to the views of the king. Margaret was, so 
to speak, little more than the pseudonym of 
Bishop Gronvelle. To the regency Philip joined 
also three councils, to help administer the gov- 
ernment. These three bodies had been for- 
merly instituted by Charles V., who, however, 
had ceased to consult them, finding it more 
simple to rely exclusively on himself. But 
Philip, less inclined than his father to reside at 
Brussels, saw in these very councils a guaran- 
tee, and not an embarrassment, in carrying out 
his purposes. They appeared to him an excel- 
lent means of counterbalancing his sisters pop- 
ularity, or of checking any ambitious projects 
which she might entertain. The Council of 
Finance watched over the revenues of the State 
and the domains of the Crown. The Privy 
Council was a sort of supreme court, charged 
with the administration of justice and the grant- 
ing of pardons. The Council of State, the most 
important of the three bodies, presided over 
war measures and foreign affairs — in a word, 
over all the important acts of the government 



William the Taciturn. 23 

In addition to this administrative machinery 
the provinces had stadtholders, or governors, 
who had the superior command of the troops 
within their respective territories, and the su- 
pervision of the civil and judicial administration. 
William, disappointed in his just expectations, 
obtained, instead of the regency, the vacant 
stadtholdership of the provinces of Holland, 
Zeeland, and Utrecht. It was difficult for 
Philip to refuse him this slight compensation. 
The Prince of Orange appeared in his eyes as a 
power which required to be skillfully managed 
until a favorable moment should arrive for 
crushing it. 

Before quitting the Netherlands Philip had 
heard the States-General — assembled at Ghent 
to pay their parting respects to him — represent 
the grievances of the people in regard to the 
edicts of religion, the Inquisition, the prolonged 
stay of the Spanish troops, the imposts, and the 
illegal employment of foreigners in offices of 
trust. The Prince of Orange was among the 
number of the grandees who seconded these 
complaints. And hence Philip, at the moment 
of embarking on the ship at Flushing, which 
was destined to bear him away once and for- 



24 William the Taciturn. 

ever from the Netherlands, on perceiving Will- 
iam among the notabilities about him, gave ex- 
pression to his suspicions and his hostility. He 
remonstrated earnestly with him, and reproached 
him with having, by his intrigues, excited the 
States-General against him. William replied 
calmly, saying that the States had acted on 
their own convictions and in obedience to the 
public sentiment of the provinces, and that 
they alone had taken this step. " No," said 
Philip, grasping his arm and shaking it with 
violence, " it is not the States, but you, you, 
you ! " The prince made no answer, and, with- 
out waiting to see the king fully embarked, 
contented himself with wishing him a happy 
journey, and returned to the city, resolved to 
serve faithfully the interests of his own country, 
and to look upon Philip with distrust. (August 
26, 1559.) 



William the Taciturn. 



25 



CHAPTER II. 



New Measure of Philip II. against the Protestants of the 
Netherlands — Opposition of William — His religious sen- 
timents at this period — Ceremony of his marriage with 
Anna of Saxony. 



N leaving the Netherlands, Philip had earn- 



estly recommended the rigorous execution 
of the ordinances which his father had made 
against the Protestants, which had temporarily 
fallen into inaction in the tumult and distrac- 
tion caused by foreign wars. 

Charles V. had persecuted the Protestants 
rather from policy than from conviction, as is 
evinced by his conduct toward the Pope, whom 
he hesitated not to besiege and even imprison. 
The unity of religion appeared to him closely 
allied to the unity of his empire ; and the lib- 
erty of conscience which was demanded by the 
Reformation — the twin-sister of civil liberty — 
was in his eyes a danger for his empire. The 
absolute authority which he claimed to exercise 
in political matters found, in the blind obedience 




26 William the Taciturn. 



which the Romish Church prescribed, an en- 
couragement and support. AH forms of des- 
potism, in fact, second and support each other. 
Charles had too much breadth of mind and in- 
sight not to feel this, and this is the motive 
which, above all others, induced him so ardently 
to embrace the cause of Catholicism. 

Philip II., on the contrary, in combating 
Protestantism acted as much from his own re- 
ligious principles as in the interest of his crown. 
He believed himself called to subdue the rebel- 
lious subjects of the papacy, and to break down 
all barriers that opposed it. His favorite 
project — the work to which he sacrificed all 
others — was, to use his own expression, the ex- 
tirpation of heresy. Born and educated in Spain, 
to which country he hastened to return as soon 
as he became king, he was the incarnation of 
the fanaticism of his people, with whom the 
hatred of Christian heretics had replaced the 
hatred they formerly had cherished against the 
Jews and Moors. And yet this monarch, who 
in order to the maintenance of his faith caused 
to be destroyed by fire and sword thousands of 
victims, and who observed his religious duties 
as a Catholic with a monkish regularity, was 



William the Taciturn. 27 

accustomed to indulge in the grossest debauch- 
ery. And, more still, he lived publicly in adul- 
tery for long years, and practiced falsehood and 
murder down to his death. Such are the sad 
fruits of a conscience perverted by the narrow 
bigotry of an external religion, and encouraged 
by the thought of rendering to God services 
that would amply compensate for his sins ! 

Situated between Germany and France, the 
Flemish and Dutch provinces had gladly wel- 
comed the religious Reformation, the principles 
of which were transplanted into them from these 
two countries. But these principles met with 
great opposition. It is only with shuddering 
that one can read the edicts issued by Charles 
V. against the partisans of the new ideas. The 
Protestants are stigmatized in them as " dis- 
turbers of the public peace," and as such are 
condemned — " the men to perish by the sword, 
and the women to be buried alive, in case they 
repent of their errors ; and in case of ob- 
stinacy, both men and women," adds the im- 
portant article which we cite, " are to be burned 
alive, and in both cases all their goods are to be 
confiscated to the profit of the Crown." 

The clemency of the sovereign was therefore 



28 William the Taciturn. 

limited to conceding to the repenting heretics 
the favor of being decapitated or buried alive, 
instead of perishing at the stake. 

These barbarous decrees, the execution of 
which was confided to inquisitors whom the 
Emperor, in order not. too violently to shock the 
liberal spirit of the nation, had consented to 
designate simply as " spiritual judges," filled the 
Netherlands with devastation and blood, with- 
out, however, succeeding in extinguishing dis- 
sent from the Catholic Church. Philip hoped 
to succeed in this work by a redoublement of 
severity. And he adopted, besides, a new 
measure to hasten the accomplishment of his 
purpose. 

Not satisfied with stirring up the zeal of the 
inquisitors already employed, he augmented 
their number by establishing new bishoprics. 
The Pope had joyfully consented to this in- 
creasing of the episcopal force in the Nether- 
lands. The bull issued on this occasion 
indicates very clearly the purpose of the King 
of Spain. " Paul IV.," so reads the document, 
" servant of the servants of Christ, desiring to 
provide for the happiness of the provinces and 
for the eternal salvation of their inhabitants, has 



William the Taciturn. 29 

determined to establish on this fertile soil sev- 
eral new bishoprics. The enemy of the human 
race is prowling over this land at the present 
time under so many diverse forms, and the 
Netherlands being at present under the scepter 
of the well beloved son of the Church, Philip 
the Catholic, are surrounded by so many and 
schismatic nations, that the eternal felicity of 
the country seems to be in great danger," etc. 

Consequently Paul IV. authorized the king 
to nominate new bishops, and he was directed 
to add to them three vicars, two of w T hom were 
to be " inquisitors!' Philip had no hesitation 
in employing this odious term, which his father 
had had at least the complacency to change. 
The people of the Netherlands had allowed 
themselves to believe that the ecclesiastical 
judges, charged with judging and punishing the 
heretics of the country, were not as bad as the 
Spanish Inquisition, from the simple reason of 
their not bearing the name. The word, as is 
often the case with the mass of the people, gave 
quite as much offense as the thing itself. In 
pronouncing this word, Philip awakened the 
people to the puerility of this distinction. Be- 
sides, it was an established precedent of the 



30 William the Taciturn. 

country that ecclesiastical establishments were 
not to be enlarged or multiplied without the 
consent of the States-General ; whereas, now, 
thirteen new bishoprics w T ere added to the four 
already existing, in the most unprecedented 
manner. The King had by this course not only 
grossly violated the constitution of the country, 
but had also grievously shocked public opinion. 
The consequence was a general indignation. 
The Prince of Orange was at the head of the 
opposition. The Provinces determined to close 
the gates of their cities against the new prelates, 
and to defend their privileges and their charters, % 
even to the detriment of the interior com- 
mercial prosperity which the new episcopal 
seats would have provided. The fact is, the 
popular discontent needed only a pretext for 
outbreak : the terrible persecutions of the pre- 
ceding reign had heaped up in the public heart 
deep grievances and grudges, which could 
hardly fail on the first occasion to break forth 
in violent storms. The ashes of the martyrs of 
Charles V. were destined sooner or later to 
waken avengers. 

The members of the nobility, who saw with 
pain the rights of the nation trodden under 



William the Taciturn. 31 

foot, and the States-General opened to fourteen 
new clerical members, whose voices diminished 
the strength of the civil representation and 
jeopardized the liberal party, urged their fellow- 
citizens to demand of the King that, as he had 
already promised, he would now actually recall 
to Spain the Spanish legion. They hoped thus 
to deprive the Regency of the surest means of 
executing the new edicts. 

William seconded these demands in open 
council, and declared that he could not continue 
to command troops which had been confided to 
him but provisionally. The motives which in- 
duced him in this conjuncture to oppose the 
projects of Philip were not in the least of a 
religious character. It is true, indeed, that, as 
he himself expressed it, he " felt some com- 
passion for so many virtuous men and women 
devoted to death by the cruel inquisition ;" but 
he detested the edicts more from mere human- 
ity than from religious sympathy. His love 
was a love of country and not of the Reforma- 
tion. A Catholic from social convenience and 
from habit, he was in fact at this epoch more a 
philosopher than a believer at all, more a patriot 
than a Christian. Religion was for him, as for 



32 William the Taciturn. 

many others, a secondary and not an essential 
element in life. He had more inclination for 
the pleasures and festivals which filled so large 
a place in the existence of the opulent nobility 
of the Netherlands than for the practices of 
piety or the questions of theology. He even 
regarded, as did almost all persons of high rank, 
the new doctrines as dangerous innovations, and 
he preferred that in his own territory the estab- 
lished religion should be preserved. In fact 
William was at this time simply a powerful 
grandee, distinguished both for his wit and his 
polished manners. In spite of his reserve and 
prudence, he was of so amiable a character, ac- 
cording to the testimony of a strongly Catholic 
historian, that he was a general favorite. His 
palace at Brussels was a focus of the Flemish 
aristocracy, and he there practiced a hospitality 
truly royal. 

There is as yet an immense difference be- 
tween this young worldly-wise and politic, 
though frivolous and even prodigal, prince, and 
that grave and somewhat austere -man whose 
virtues and genius saved the Reformation in 
the Netherlands and founded a free nation. It is 
well not to forget that great men have their no- 



William the Taciturn. 33 

vitiate, and generally rise only step by step to 
that pedestal, from the summit of which they 
reap the admiration and homage of posterity. 
This is especially the case with such heroes as 
William, who have * qualities more solid than 
brilliant, and less of a rapidity in conception 
than of justness and breadth. 

The Regent gave heed to the counsels of 
William of Orange, and partially yielded to the 
murmuts which broke out on every hand. She 
very well knew that the people of the Nether- 
lands, both because of their intelligence and of 
their energy, would be almost irresistible in a 
revolt — that, like their ancestors, the Batavi and 
the Belgae, they would be able to withstand the 
armies of a vast empire. She wrote to Philip 
at Madrid, declaring that if the foreign troops 
were not withdrawn from the Provinces he 
might certainly expect a refusal of imposts and 
a general revolt, and that she had not in the 
treasury the money to pay a single company. 
Philip wrote back ambiguously, as was his cus- 
tom, and tried to find subterfuges. But the 
losses which he had just sustained in his war 
against the Turks constrained him in spite of 
himself to fulfill his promise, The Spanish 



34 William the Taciturn. 

legion embarked for Spain from Zeeland two 
years after the departure of the King, to the 
great relief of all the provinces, (1561.) 

In the spring of this same year the Prince of 
Orange married Anna of Saxony, a daughter of 
that celebrated Elector Maurice, who had by his 
victories forced Charles V. to concede to the 
Protestants of Germany the free exercise of 
their worship. This marriage, of mere policy, 
is another evidence of the religious indifference 
of William at this period. He was not suffi- 
ciently deeply a Catholic to renounce an ad- 
vantageous alliance with a thoroughly Lutheran 
family, and he was too much attached to his 
noble rank and position to permit that his chil- 
dren should be raised in the doctrines of the 
Augsburg Confession. The marriage was set for 
Sunday, August 24, 1 561, the day of the year on 
which, eleven years later, occurred the terrible 
St. Bartholomew massacre at Paris. The Elector 
Augustus, the uncle and tutor of the princess, 
rode out from the city of Leipsic, where the 
ceremony was to take place, and went to meet 
the bridegroom with a large and brilliant escort. 
William of Orange was attended by a thou- 
sand cavaliers, among whom figured, at his side, 



William the Taciturn. 35 

his three brothers, Adolphus, John, and Lewis 
of Nassau, and many other of the higher no- 
bility of the Netherlands. The two troops 
mingled their ranks and entered the city to- 
gether, where, since the day before, the special 
embassadors of the Kings of Spain and Den- 
mark, and many German princes and prelates, 
as well as the other invited guests, had been in 
waiting. 

William repaired at once to the City Hall, 
and, dismounting, ascended the stairway, where 
he was welcomed by the princess, attended by 
her ladies of honor. After the usual compli- 
ments Anna retired to her apartments, and a 
few moments afterward presented herself, ac- 
companied by the Prince, with proper witnesses, 
before the high notary, for the signature of the 
marriage contract. 

On the accomplishment of these tedious for- 
malities, the nuptial procession was ushered into 
the grand chamber of the City Hall, preceded 
by the court musicians, and followed by the 
marshals, councilors, high state officers, and the 
electoral family. The marriage was celebrated 
according to the rites of the Lutheran Church. 

After listening to an exhortation appropriate to 

3 



36 William the Taciturn. 

the occasion, the consorts received the bene- 
diction of the pastor in charge of the ceremony. 
Immediately after the ceremony, and in the same 
chamber, the Princess and the Prince were placed 
publicly, according to the usage of the day, upon 
a magnificent bed, rich in gilt and embroidered 
curtains, the Princess having been conducted 
thither by the elector and electress. A colla- 
tion and spiced drinks were then abundantly 
administered .to the whole company. These 
ancient usages having been complied with, the 
Prince and Princess repaired to their respective 
apartments to dress for the banquet. 

Five circular tables were then laid in the same 
chamber, each accommodating ten guests. As 
soon as the first course, consisting of twenty- 
five dishes, had been placed upon the principal 
table, the Prince and his bride, together with 
the electoral pair, the envoys of Spain and Den- 
mark, and others, took places at the table, and 
the banquet began. Cheerful music was played 
during the whole time. The choir of the Elector 
sang the most jovial of songs ; and the noble 
vassals of Augustus of Saxony passed around 
water, napkins, and wine, every thing taking 
place with befitting stateliness. 



William the Taciturn. 37 

The banquet once finished, the tables were 
cleared away, and a ball was inaugurated. After 
a long season of dancing, refreshments were 
served again, after which the Prince and Prin- 
cess were conducted to their nuptial chamber. 

The festivities continued during four days, 
and the time was occupied with tournaments, 
sports, masquerades, and dancing ; after which 
the Prince of Orange and the Princess set out 
for Brussels. 



38 William the Taciturn. 



CHAPTER III. 

Granvelle and the Inquisition — Exasperation of the people — 
Revolt of Valenciennes — William demands the recall of 
Cardinal Granvelle. 

TOURING the absence of William of Orange, 
*S the Bishop of Arras, (Granvelle,) having 
become more and more the actual governor of the 
Netherlands, had succeeded in setting to work 
the new Bishops in their respective fields, and 
in effecting his own entrance into Malines in 
the character of Archbishop and Primate of all 
the Provinces. This work accomplished, he 
entered upon the execution of the plan of Philip 
IL, and set at once this large body of new 
agents at the execution of the edicts. The 
dignity of Cardinal, which he had recently ob- 
tained, enabled him to hide the obscurity of his 
birth under his official purple* and formed an 
additional motive for a zealous fulfillment of the 
pleasure of Philip. Detested by the nobility, 
whom he had offended by his haughty arrogance 
and his arbitrary administration, he was no less 



William the Taciturn. 39 

odious to the masses of the people, who accused 
him of being the enemy of their liberties and 
the chief prop of the Inquisition. This unpop- 
larity he deserved only too well ; for he mani- 
fested, from the beginning of the year 1562, an 
extraordinary activity in forwarding all the 
purposes of the Inquisition, and the executions 
resulting therefrom were very frequent. But 
the heretics multiplied under the sword of the 
executioners, and the Reformation only spread 
all the more rapidly. The heroism of its mar- 
tyrs made an immense impression, and the 
death of a single victim seemed to call to life a 
score to fill his place. The people accorded the 
warmest applause and sympathy to the sufferers 
from the Inquisition. They chanted the Psalms 
of David in their own mother-tongue, in the 
presence of the Inquisitors and in the face of 
the scaffold. Nor were they content with this ; 
in the provinces where the Protestants were 
most numerous they attempted to defend them- 
selves by force. The local magistrates, who 
were witnesses of the popular agitation, and 
were secretly hostile to the system of persecu- 
tion practiced by the Government, were but 
dilatory in condemning the Reformed, and often 



40 William the Taciturn. 

prolonged their imprisonment in order to avoid 
exciting insurrection by public executions. 
Already, in the Walloon provinces, the multi- 
tude had rescued prisoners from the Inquisitors, 
and repulsed with rude arms the soldiers sent 
out to disperse them. This was the prelude to 
the Revolution of the Netherlands, which was in 
fact simply the armed protestation of a nation 
weary of offering their necks to the butchers, 
and determined to die on the battle-field rather 
than in the fires of Popery. Men, women, and 
children were burned to death, and their ashes 
cast to the wind, for the simple reason of having 
pronounced, perhaps ten years in the past, 
words of disrespect as to the Church of Rome, 
or for having dared to pray' in the secrecy of 
their homes, or for having declined to bow the 
knee to the host when borne along the streets, 
or for having had the honesty not to disavow 
their personal convictions, even though they 
had taken care not to communicate them to 
others. Evidently, when such a work was being 
accomplished in all the cities of the Nether- 
lands, and when such cruel measures were 
receiving a fresh impulse from a king who 
seemed to have mounted the throne only to 



William the Taciturn. 41 

torture the more efficaciously his subjects, it 
was time that suffering patience should cease 
to be a virtue. 

The incidents which took place at Valen- 
ciennes will furnish a correct notion of these 
preliminary revolts — of these visible symptoms 
of an immense popular movement of which 
William of Orange was destined to be the hero. 

Two ministers of the Gospel, Faveau and 
Mallart, had been languishing for several months 
in the dungeons of the city, in the population of 
which there were near five thousand of their re- 
ligious sympathizers. The judges, fearing an 
outbreak, had deferred the punishment. Cardi- 
nal Granvelle, weary of these delays, peremp- 
torily ordered the execution of the sentence. 
On the 27th of April, 1562, Faveau and Mallart 
were conducted to the stake. But at a given 
signal, at the moment when the victims were 
earnestly commending their souls to God, the 
multitude seized the burning fagots and cast 
them to the winds. The soldiers succeeded, 
however, in bringing back the two ministers 
into prison. The Inquisitors, in view of avoid- 
ing a surprise, counseled the killing of them in 
their dungeon and the throwing of their bloody 



42 William the Taciturn. 

heads mto the streets as a warning. But the 
magistrates feared such a procedure, lest it 
should exasperate the people beyond measure. 
During the day bands of men traversed the city 
shouting psalms. In the evening they gathered 
about the prison, and, after a vigorous assault, 
liberated the captives from their guards, and 
furnished them with means of quitting the city. 
The Government, learning of this affair, made 
haste to send troops to restore the disregarded 
authority of the Inquisition. " No means was 
neglected," as remarks an author of the times, 
" to correct and ameliorate " this extra-humane, 
people, and for the two lost victims the In- 
quisitors gained a hundred. 

All these acts of severity, of which Granvelle 
was in fact but the accomplice, were, however, 
imputed to him rather than to the king, their real 
author. The people constantly looked upon 
him as the evil genius of Philip, whereas he was 
little more than his docile instrument. The 
nobility redoubled their invectives against the 
insolent upstart who despoiled them of their 
privileges, and whose high-handed tyranny re- 
duced them, in the Council of State, to the role 
of a mere phantom. 



William the Taciturn. 43 

William, concerned more for the evils of his 
country than for the prerogatives of his caste, 
decided to join with other high personages and 
demand of the King the sacrifice of the Cardinal 
as a means of pacifying the popular wrath and 
of restoring matters to their usual order. An 
old friend of the Cardinal, who had highly 
prized his affection, William hesitated not to 
break with him, and to incur the hostility of a 
man no less powerful than dangerous, by de- 
claring openly against his administration, and 
by persistently seeking for his removal from 
office. After various fruitless attempts, he suc- 
ceeded in inducing the Council of State and the 
Regent to send an embassador to Philip in order 
to inform him of the deplorable condition of the 
Provinces. This measure, however, brought 
about no change in the policy of the monarch, 
who was disposed in advance to make no con- 
cessions. The envoy of the Council brought 
back from Madrid nothing but empty protesta- 
tions of good will. 

The Prince of Orange made another ultimate 
effort to enlighten the King as to the true state 
of affairs, and to arrest the rising flood of 
popular discontent. A sincere royalist no less 



44 William the Taciturn. 

than a good patriot, he did not fear to address 
to Philip a letter such that only two of his 
noble friends dared to sign with him. In this 
paper he spoke out against the absolutism of 
Granvelle, and his contempt for the rights of the 
nation and the established constitutions. He 
also denounced his covetousness, his debauched 
manner of life, and the aversion with which he 
inspired the whole country. In fine, he pre- 
dicted a general insurrection if the supreme 
power continued longer in such unworthy 
hands. 

After three months of delay, Philip responded 
with a refusal, June 6, 1563. The signers of 
the letter, therefore, refused to sit in the Council 
of State so long as the Cardinal directed it. 
A crisis w r as imminent." The public treasury 
was exhausted ; the people and the nobles were 
in exasperation ; and even the Regent herself 
solicited the dismissal of Granvelle. The King 
finally yielded, but, in order to avoid the ap- 
pearance of so doing, he hit upon the plan of 
giving to the Cardinal a leave of absence for 
which he had not asked, and sent him to 
Franche-Comte, his birth-place, to visit his 
mother. 



William the Taciturn. 45 

The Cardinal left Brussels the 15 th of March, 
1564. William of Orange was not mistaken as 
to the true nature of this absence. " Although 
the Cardinal talks of soon returning," wrote he 
to a friend, "we feel confident that, even as he 
has lied in matters concerning his departure, so 
he will have had little regard to the truth in re- 
spect to his return." 

The truth is that, thanks to the perseverance 
and the courage of the Prince of Orange, the 
•public conscience had been respected: Gran- 
velle returned not to the Netherlands. 



46 William the Taciturn. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Zeal of William for the public good — Outbreak at Antwerp — 
Decrees of the Council of Trent — The Prince of Orange 
opposes them — Obstinacy of the King — A prediction of 
William. 

AFTER the retirement of the Cardinal, 
William and his friends re-entered the 
Council of State and entered upon their labors 
with the . greatest zeal ; the Regent Margaret 
manifested a confidence in them which deeply 
affected them, and which they endeavored to 
justify. The Prince of Orange especially felt 
all the responsibility of his position. It was he 
who had enabled the opposition to triumph over 
the former minister, and it was incumbent on 
him now to take advantage of this victory in 
order to root out the abuses of the Government. 
The former administration had, in its cupidity, 
trafficked in the public offices, and had even 
sold justice itself to the highest bidder. The 
finances of the State had been squandered by 
the public agents, and dissipated in luxury and 



William the Taciturn. 47 

pleasure. Corruption, like an immense plague, 
had infected and was preying upon the entire 
country. 

William, whose hands were pure of all fraud, 
and whose heart beat only for the happiness of 
his adopted country, suffered deeply from the 
public distress. His visage, rendered pale by 
these generous anxieties, and furrowed by pre- 
mature wrinkles, evidenced the change which 
events had wrought in his character and tastes. 
He was no longer that brilliant favorite of 
Charles V. ; he had become the chief of the 
national party in the Provinces — the hope of a 
nation, and not the ornament of a court. He 
passed his night-hours in studying the questions 
which were debated in the Council of State, 
and in seeking the most suitable remedy for 
the evils of the situation. None was more 
busy than he in the sessions of this body, and 
none frequented less the festivities of the ducal 
palace. A partisan of Granvelle wrote to the 
retired Cardinal : "It is said that the Prince is 
very, sedate, and in fact this is manifest in his 
countenance. Some of his friends say he is not 
able to sleep/' And indeed he was hindered 
from sleep by his care for his country. He 



48 William the Taciturn. 

succeeded in concentrating in the Council of 
State the powers of which the Privy Council 
had rendered itself unw r orthy by its falseness, 
and the Council of Finance by its corruption. 
But instead of gratifying his ambition by govern- 
ing the country through this single body, of which 
he had become the animating soul, he was in- 
cessant in his demands for the convocation of the 
States-General, and in representing them as the 
most suitable judges of the exigencies of the 
time. But the clouds which he endeavored to 
dissipate grew daily thicker and darker on the 
political horizon of the Provinces. In spite of 
the spirit of tolerance with which he had suc- 
ceeded in inspiring his colleagues of the Coun- 
cil, the religious persecutions still continued, 
and kept alive the irritation of the public mind, 
which had momentarily abated on the retire- 
ment of Granvelle. 

The close of the year was marked by inci- 
dents well calculated to precipitate the catas- 
trophe which William was seeking in vain to 
avert. 

Antwerp was the theater of a scene similar 
to that of Valenciennes. A Carmelite monk, 
converted to Protestantism, was engaged in prop- 



William the Taciturn. 49 

agating there the doctrines of the Reforma- 
tion with very great success, though secretly 
and without the knowledge of the Inquisition. 
But finally he was betrayed and denounced by 
a false brother. He was immediately arrested 
and put to torture to force him to confess his 
adherents. But he kept silence, and opened 
his mouth only to proclaim his faith. He was 
condemned to be burned to death. 

He took advantage of the few days which 
preceded the execution of this sentence to 
address letters of consolation to his friends, 
and to send to his betrayer the assurance of his 
forgiveness, and exhortations to repentance. 
His patience, his gentleness, and his courage 
excited a general enthusiasm ; and hence it 
was with a burning indignation that the people 
saw him borne along the streets toward the 
place of his martyrdom. Gloom and threats 
brooded over all faces. The multitude crowded 
around the executioners, and, like a storm- 
dashed sea, advanced and retreated, and then 
advanced again, ready to dash upon and destroy 
them. Fabricius — this was the name of the 
minister — besought the multitude to keep calm, 
and earnestly insisted that no one should com- 



50 William the Taciturn. 

promise his life by seeking to deliver him ; 
whereupon he invited all present who partici- 
pated in his faith to persist firmly in it, like 
himself, until death. The people answered him 
by singing Psalm cxxx : " Out of the depths 
have I cried unto thee, O Lord ; Lord, hear my 
voice ; let thine ears be attentive to the voice 
of my supplications," etc. There was in these 
thousands of voices uttering forth this hymn 
of grief and hope a sublime expression of the 
sentiments of an entire oppressed nation, and, 
as it were, a fearful echo of its vows and 
sufferings. The austere and pious accents of 
David were alone worthy of the holy cause 
for which the Revolution of the Netherlands 
took place. 

At the moment when Fabricius arrived at 
the place of execution, he kneeled down to offer 
to God his last prayer, and to beseech for 
strength to die worthily. But the executioner 
disturbed his devotion, raised him up rudely, 
chained him to the stake, and pressed a heavy 
band around his neck. 

At the sight of this the exasperated multitude 
could no longer restrain themselves ; they cast 
rude missiles at the executioner and his assist- 



William the Taciturn. 51 

ants, and forced them to flight. Then they 
broke down the barrier which separated them 
from the victim, and rejoiced in the thought of 
saving him. But it was too late. In escaping, 
the popish executioner had struck a hammer 
into the head of the preacher of the Gospel, and 
had plunged his dagger into his heart. Some 
of the witnesses of this scene fancied that they 
saw the hands and the lips of the preacher still 
moving in the attitude of prayer. The outbreak, 
however, was soon put down, and after the body 
of the martyr had been roasted in the flames, 
its crisped remains were tied to a rude stone 
and thrown into the Escant. 

On the night of this sad day an anonymous^ 
placard was posted on the walls of the City 
Hall of Antwerp, written in characters of blood, 
and in which it was announced that Fabricius 
would have a multitude of avengers. 

At the news of this tumult and of this bloody 
defiance, Philip dispatched to Margaret the se- 
verest orders to chastise the disturbers of the 
peace. But the Regency punished only a single 
one of the guilty ones, from fear of exciting a 
formidable insurrection. 

Nor was it simply at Antwerp that the In- 

4 



52 William the Taciturn. 

quisition encountered vigorous resistance. The 
four counties of Flanders, outraged by the 
atrocities of the servants of this ecclesiastical tri- 
bunal, solemnly denounced the Chief Inquisitor 
of their territory, Tetelmann, who had been ar- 
resting, torturing, strangling and burning, with- 
out any other rule than his simple good pleasure. 
They addressed their complaint to the King, but 
were rewarded for their pains by a royal letter 
felicitating and praising the accused for " his 
virtuous conduct." 

But that which gave the climax to the popular 
discontent was the publication of the decrees of 
the Council of Trent, which had just concluded 
its fittings. Philip ordered them to be pub- 
lished and executed throughout the Netherlands, 
because he saw in them a confirmation and an 
intensification of his own system of persecution. 
By them every heretic was made an outlaw, 
and excluded from both earth and heaven. 

The Romish Church, as was remarked, alone 
gave the right to be born, to marry, and to die. 
Whoever did not submit to its dogmas, or re- 
fused conformity to its rites, was not worthy of 
life, nor even of a grave ; he was but a wild 
beast, to be hunted out and destroyed. 



William the Taciturn. 53 

These decrees were, before their proclama- 
tion, communicated to the Council of State by 
the Regent. The Prince of Orange assailed 
them with that tranquil firmness which was the 
key to his strength. Making skillful use of 
what they contained contradictory to the funda- 
mental laws of the Netherland Constitution — 
which would henceforth be forced to be a dead 
letter, and to give place to ecclesiastical ordi- 
nances — he succeeded in inducing the Regent 
and the majority of the Council to send to Philip 
one of the most illustrious and popular of the 
Flemish grandees, namely, Count Egmont, in 
order to solicit from the King the revocation, or 
at least the modification, of the new edicts. He 
boldly declared that the time for the ina ± uisi- 
torial executions to cease had arrived ; that 
Philip was nothing more than the hereditary 
head of the seventeen Provinces, which had, all 
of them, constitutions fully as sacred and much 
more ancient than the crown itself ; and, finally, 
that the canons of the Council of Trent would 
be rejected in the Netherlands as the most vio- 
lent infractions of the rights of the nation and 
of the liberty of conscience. 

This discourse had such an effect that his 



54 William the Taciturn. 

opponent, though an eloquent man, had an 
attack of apoplexy on reaching his home. The 
eloquence of William had literally annihilated 
him. 

Egmont set out for Spain in January, 1565, 
the bearer of counsels which the Prince of 
Orange had suggested. This embassy had no 
other success than to corrupt the embassador 
himself. A general no less skillful than brave, 
the Count lacked both sound discretion and 
self-consistency in the affairs of every-day life. 
Dominated by an insatiable vanity and by the 
need of money, he succumbed to the flatteries 
and liberalities of Philip. He returned to 
Brussels in the highest delight, and with fair 
promises. Pushing his system of duplicity to 
its extreme, the King made pretense of nego- 
tiating with the Council of State, and of looking 
about for means of punishing the heretics with- 
out exciting the murmurs of the people. 

William soon discovered the usual dissimula- 
tion of Philip in the miserable result of the 
mission of Egmont. He frankly expressed the 
distrust he felt for the favorable news brought 
back by the Count. On the 23d of October, 
Philip justified, by his answer, the suspicions of 



William the Taciturn. 55 

William. " Whatever may have been the inter- 
pretation," so reads this document. " which 
Count Egmont may have given to his verbal 
declarations, the King had never for a moment 
thought of making the least change in the penal 
laws which the Emperor, his father, had estab- 
lished in these Provinces thirty-five years pre- 
viously. Consequently, he now ordered that 
these edicts be executed henceforth in all their 
scope, that the Inquisitors should receive the 
most active assistance from the civil power, and 
that the decrees of the Council of Trent should 
have the force of law, without restriction, in all 
the provinces of the Netherlands." 

He simply recommended that in the interest 
of the public peace the heretics should in the 
future be executed in their prisons, away from 
the sight of the multitude, whom the spectacle 
of their courage and of their joy in the moment 
of death inspired with admiration and predis- 
posed in favor of a doctrine which thus made 
heroes of its followers. When orders of this 
character were read in the Council of State, the 
Regent and the most devoted partisans of the 
policy of the King were utterly consternated. 
Such orders constituted in fact an actual dec- 



$6 William the Taciturn. 

laration dff war and of war without mercy or 
truce, against all the instincts as well as all the 
usages of the nation. It was ecclesiastical 
slavery added to political slavery that the King 
of Spain was undertaking to impose on a nation 
which had petitioned in favor of its time-honored 
privileges, and which was looking for an allevia- 
tion of its sufferings. 

The Prince of Orange did not fail to give ex- 
pression to his indignation at the revelation of 
this cruel dissimulation. From -the Council of 
State the agitation passed out in the streets. 
The people repeated and commented on the de- 
bates which had taken place among the Coun- 
cilors. The terror was general, and wrath 
throbbed in every heart. 

The people, to use the figure of a modern his- 
torian, like a flock conducted toward a slaugh- 
ter-house, refused to cross the terrible threshold 
over which Philip was endeavoring to drive 
them, and strove, bellowing and resisting, to 
find some issue of escape from the knife of the 
butcher. Appeals to revolt were circulated 
broadcast. Every night placards were affixed 
to the doors of the houses of the chiefs of the 
opposition, and especially of the Prince of Or- 



William the Taciturn. 57 

ange, in which the citizens besought these men 
to save the expiring flame of liberty, and to de- 
fend the oppressed Provinces. 

The Regent, terrified at these manifestations, 
interrogated once again the Council of State as 
to the conduct she should pursue in view of 
such precise instructions from the King on the 
one hand, and of the agitation of the public 
mind on the other. The Councilors were un- 
decided, and knew not what course to propose. 
Those who were generally most disposed to 
second the Inquisition inclined now toward 
moderation, and wished to represent once again, 
to the King, the difficulties with which the de- 
crees would surely meet, before making them 
public. 

William showed now with an inexorable logic 
the impossibility of having recourse to this 
expedient. There had already been enough 
-measures of precaution, of embassies, and of 
useless negotiations. Events alone seemed to 
him now capable of convincing the obstinacy 
*of Philip II. "The orders of the King," said 
he, " are too precise and too absolute to allow 
of any mean between submission or revolt." At 
these words every one was silent. 



58 William the Taciturn. 

The Duchess felt the cruel truth of this obser- 
vation. But she chose rather to incur the 
wrath of her subjects than that of her brother, 
Philip II. 

It was determined, therefore, that the decrees 
of the Council of Trent should be immediately 
published, together with the edicts of the Inqui- 
sition, according to the will of the King. While 
listening to the reading of this decision, the 
Prince of Orange remarked to one sitting near 
him : " We are about to witness the first scene 
of a famous tragedy." 

This prophecy was accomplished too soon. 
William entertained the hope that from the ex- 
cess of evil there would arise the remedy. 



William the Taciturn. 



CHAPTER V, 

Proclamation of the Decrees of the Council of Trent— Agita- 
tion in the Provinces— Attitude of William of Orange- 
Request of the Nobles— Origin of the Gueux Field- 
preaching — Intervention of the Prince at Antwerp. 

'T^HE tragedy predicted by the Prince of 
Orange commenced in fact with the proc- 
lamation of the Trent decrees. " The flames 
of the popular rage/' says an historian of the 
times, " blazed up from the top of every roof 
both in the cities and throughout the country." 
The people, deceived in their hopes of tranquil- 
lity, and, as it were, the dupe of t" eir own for- 
bearance, breathed out openly their indignation. 
The highest personages of the State sympathized 
with the multitude. At the instigation of the 
grandees, the Councils of State in the several 
Provinces, their governors taking the lead, re- 
fused to publish the royal orders, and sent to 
the Regent the most urgent protestations. The 
Protestants, the most interested in this opposi- 
tion, circulated at Brussels many copies of a 



6o 



William the Taciturn. 



letter which they addressed to the King, and 
which calls to mind the noble and daring words 
of the martyrs of the primitive Church. " We 
are ready and willing," said they, " to die for the 
Gospel ; but we read therein, ' Render to Caesar 
the things which are Caesar's, and to God the 
things which are God's/ ... It is a constant 
remark that man does not swear, he is a Prot- 
estant ; this man is not a drunkard nor a deb- 
auchee, he is a partisan of the new faith. And 
yet, in spite of this fair testimony, there are no 
punishments which are not heaped upon us." 

In the midst of this general agitation, William 
wrote remonstratingly to the Duchess, " prefer- 
ring to run the risk of being censured for his 
interference rather than of being accused of 
contributing by his silence to the desolation of 
his country." Faithful to his favorite policy, he 
greatly disliked the prospect of a direct conflict 
between Philip and his fellow-citizens, and in 
spite of repeated failures in his conciliatory 
efforts, and notwithstanding his sad forebod- 
ings, he vet desired to use all his influence on 
the Regent to have the edicts recalled, and to 
induce Philip to change his purpose. " It was 
impossible," declared he to Margaret, " to exe- 



William the Taciturn. 6i 



cute any longer the orders of the King without 
lighting up a civil war, especially at a time when 
the general poverty was so bitter and the minds 
of all exasperated. " 

To the very last moment the Prince hesitated 
to break with his sovereign, and entertained 
some hope of a change in his policy, as com- 
pelled by the force of circumstances. It seemed 
to him that Philip would, after all, prefer to save 
the Netherlands even at sacrifice of the Inqui- 
sition. Despite his clear insight into men, he 
did not yet sufficiently know the fanaticism of 
the King. He therefore observed a prudent 
reserve ; and when his brother Lewis of Nassau, 
and his friend Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde, 
formed, under the name of a compromise of 
the nobles, a league to oppose the edicts and 
the Inquisition, William declined to form a 
part of it. 

Meanwhile the execution of the edicts was 
depopulating the Provinces. The merchants 
and artisans, who made up a majority of the 
Netherland Protestants, were departing and 
seeking refuge in foreign countries, and — like 
the Reformed of France after the Revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes — carried away with them 



62 



William the Taciturn. 



their skill and their virtues. The situation of 
the Netherlands was becoming more terrible 
from day to-day. Famine menaced the inhabit- 
ants not less than the executioner's ax, or, as 
William of Orange termed it, the scorpion-whip 
of the son of Charles V. The high price of 
grain formed an additional item in the suffer- 
ings of the people. 

Under circumstances as pressing as these the 
Prince of Orange could not much longer await 
the result of the measures he had counseled to 
Margaret, and remain a silent observer of the 
course of events. 

He called together, in March, 1566, the chiefs 
of the league and the principal grandees of the 
country, to concert a general' plan of conduct, 
of such a nature as to conjure the perils of the 
moment while yet avoiding all violent measures, 
which are always unfortunate and often fruit- 
less. In pursuance of his policy of legal and 
pacific resistance, he proposed to ask in a re- 
spectable petition the calling together of the 
States-General. As frequently happens in 
times of crisis, the extreme parties did not 
adopt this wise advice. The* confederates or 
leaders, as well as the warm royalists, came 



William the Taciturn. 63 

together in this meeting only in order to fall 
into greater dissension. Forced to associate 
himself more closely with the former in order 
not to sacrifice, as the latter were doing, the 
interests of country to the bloody tyranny of 
the King, William succeeded in causing the re- 
quest to be modified, w r hich was to be presented 
to the Regent, thus impressing upon the move- 
ment that character of moderation and firmness 
which no one better possessed than he. 

Forewarned of the intention which the 
Leaguers had of presenting to her a petition, 
Margaret demanded, of the Council of State 
whether or not she should receive them. Seve- 
ral of the Councilors, servilely devoted to Philip 
II., and partisans of the edicts, " advised to 
shut the door in their faces, or even to let them 
come into the palace and then cause them to be 
cut to pieces by soldiery that should be called 
in from the frontiers." William opposed this 
unworthy suggestion. " The confederates/' said 
he, " were known to him as men of honor and - 
probity. Some of them were his friends, and 
even his relatives, and there could be no good 
reason for refusing to persons of such respect- 
ability a privilege which was enjoyed by the 



64 William the Taciturn. 

humblest citizen of the nation." It was con- 
cluded to admit them. On the 3d of April 
they arrived at Brussels, to the number of three 
hundred, all of them gentlemen and well-mount- 
ed, to submit their petition to the Duchess. 

This paper rehearsed against the ordinances, 
both of Philip II. and of his father, the same 
objections as in the past. The only peculiar 
feature was that the petitioners concluded by 
supplicating the Regent to dispatch an embas- 
sador to the King to conjure him very humbly 
on their part to consent to the abolition of the 
edicts, as being necessary to avert the total ruin 
and loss of the country. In the mean time they 
begged her Highness to suspend the execution 
of the decrees and to call together the States- 
General. 

The Prince of Orange advocated in the Coun- 
cil of State these requests. They were in 
accord with the views which he had never ceased 
to express ; and though not having joined the 
League of the nobles, which had seemed to him 
an imprudent and perhaps guilty conspiracy, he 
boldly accepted the responsibility of their prin- 
ciples, and the perilous role of their apologist. 
It was during the debate which took place on 



William the Taciturn! 65 

this occasion that the Leaguers received the 
insulting nickname which they afterward 
adopted as a title of honor, and used as a war- 
cry : " Your Highness/' exclaimed to the Duch- 
ess one of the royalist Councilors, " has no 
fear, I trust, of these giteitx, [beggars !] my ad- 
vice would be that their petition be postscripted 
with sound whippings." This insult was re- 
peated to or overheard by the petitioners, who 
thereupon adopted it, associating with it the 
memory of the popular sufferings, and taking it 
as the motto of their sacrifices. 

Fideles au roi jusqit a la besace, [Faithful to 
the King, even to carrying the beggar's wallet.] 
Such was the inscription on the medals which 
they adopted a few days subsequently as badges 
of the League. And this device contained, in 
fact, a biting irony. Indeed, had not the Neth- 
erlands been reduced by their fidelity to the 
King of Spain to a state of very beggary ? Were 
not the Inquisition and the foreign rule of Spain, 
by their acts of violence and rapine, day by day 
reducing an industrious and opulent nation into 
a populace of beggars ? 

The Regent promised to the Leaguist peti- 
tioners her good offices in rendering the King 



66 



William the Taciturn. 



favorable to their request. While declaring that 
she could not suspend the Inquisition, she yet 
assured them that she would order the Inquisi- 
tors " to proceed discreetly and modestly ; " and 
she added that she was then occupied with her 
Councilors upon a scheme intended to moderate 
the severity of the standing decrees of religion, 
and to facilitate concessions on the part of 
Philip, to whom she intended to present it. 
She, in fact, dispatched embassadors to bear to 
Madrid the result of her thoughts and the rep- 
resentations of the petitioners. 

Pending these new negotiations the people 
of the Netherlands took advantage of the 
momentary relaxation of persecution to give 
public manifestation to their religious sympa- 
thies. The Protestants went out en masse from 
their retreats, and, taking courage from their 
numbers, were no longer content with meeting 
in the night and in secrecy. 

At the opening of the summer, some months 
after the presentation of the petition, in 1566, 
public sermons were held by daylight in the open 
fields. The people met together under arms, 
and as in a military camp, and surrounded their 
place of reunion with barricades constructed of 



William the Taciturn. 67 

overturned carts, trunks of trees, or of boards. 
Sentinels were stationed at each entrance to 
guard against surprise by the agents of the 
Inquisition. Thousands of persons crowded to 
these sermons. The pulpit consisted of a rude 
platform, upon which a board resting upon two 
pikes served to support the Holy Scriptures. 
Sometimes the preacher stood upon a cart or 
on the trunk of a tree. The service was opened 
by the singing of a psalm in the vulgar tongue. 
The multitude thus soon learned that all the 
grandeur and beauty of public worship do not 
consist in the sounds of a dead language and in 
the architecture of a cathedral. This worship, 
offered to God under the vault of the skies lit 
up with the radiance of the orb of clay, and in 
the midst of a vast blossoming prairie, in which 
resounded the accents of ten or twenty thousand 
united human voices, produced an effect sublime 
above any thiilg within the possibilities of 
pompous ceremonies under Gothic arches. The 
song was succeeded by a sermon, which was 
listened to with close attention and profound 
emotion. In the fervency and freshness of 
their faith the auditors melted into tears on 
hearing their ministers proclaim the mercy of 



68 



William the Taciturn. 



God in the name of Christ. On closing, the 
preacher offered prayer for the multitude pres- 
ent and for his brethren more remote, for the 
Government which refused them temples in the 
cities and hunted them down even in the open 
country, and also for that King who had sworn 
their utter annihilation : friends and enemies, 
no one was forgotten in these supplications, 
which breathed of the spirit of gentleness and 
charity. On separating after the service, per- 
haps to see each other again only in eternity 
or on the scaffold, these true-hearted believers 
purchased books of piety or of sacred songs, 
brought thither by special colporteurs. 

In the middle of July assemblies of the same 
character were held in the environs of nearly 
all the large cities. In the neighborhood of 
Antwerp they became so frequent that the 
Duchess was apprehensive of a revolt similar to 
that which had burst out two years previously 
on the occasion of the martyrdom of Fabri- 
cius. The magistrates of this city knew no 
longer how to restrain the multitude of the 
Reformed, who increased from day to day, and 
who clamored for the privilege of having, as the 
Catholics, religious edifices. The chief men of 



William the Taciturn. 69 

the League were in the midst of them, and 
encouraged noisy demonstrations. 

In this critical situation, the inhabitants of 
Antwerp besought the Regent to dispatch to 
them William of Orange; who alone was thought 
capable of preserving them from intestine war. 

The Prince, as we have seen, though defend- 
ing the liberty of conscience, was yet unfriendly 
to the Reformation. He had little taste for 
interfering in dissensions produced by the new 
doctrines, which he disliked, and by the turbu- 
lent spirit of a few young grandees, his political 
friends and old comrades. He hesitated a long 
while, and even refused a mission which he 
plainly saw would necessarily put him in a false 
position. But he finally yielded to the reiter- 
ated prayers of Margaret and of the citizens of 
the distracted city. Antwerp welcomed him as 
a liberator. More than thirty thousand persons 
crowded into the streets to meet him, and 
shouts of enthusiasm rose along his passage. 
The ramparts, the roofs of the houses, were 
covered with the people ; joy sparkled in every 
countenance. Thanks to the confidence felt for 
him by all parties, and to the ascendency of 
his genius, William succeeded in smothering 



70 William the Taciturn. 

the brooding insurrection and restoring calm to 
the city. 

Scarcely had he finished this difficult task, 
when the Duchess made a fresh appeal to his 
devotion, to re-establish order in another quarter. 
Out of patience at the delay of the answer 
from Madrid, and, with good reason, distrusting 
the intentions of the King, the Leaguers had 
united in a general assembly and adopted a 
resolution to defend the people against all 
violence for mere matters of religion, and to 
enlist German troops as a guarantee of their 
safety. 

The Prince had a conference with the chiefs 
of the League, but without any good result. The 
patience of these young Leaguers was at an end, 
and they were not able to understand the wis- 
dom and the loyalty of conduct of William, 
when he blamed them for having recourse to 
arms before exhausting all possible peaceful 
means. 



William the Taciturn. 71 



CHAPTER VI. 



The Iconoclasts — The Prince of Orange expels them from 
Antwerp — Perfidy of the Regent — Vigilance of William- 
Conference at Termonde — Position of the Prince — He re- 
presses new troubles at Antwerp. 



HE services which William of Orange had 



just rendered the Spanish Government 
obtained for him the thanks of Philip and the 
gratitude of the Duchess. He was disposed to 
prolong his stay at Antwerp, from fear of some 
new outbreak ; but Margaret insisted that he 
could not be spared from the Council of State. 
The Prince yielded to so flattering an invitation, 
and arrived at Brussels about the same time that 
the news of the disorders of the Iconoclasts, or 
image-breakers, began to come in. Within four 
or five days hundreds of churches had been 
ravaged and profaned by a handful of madcaps, 
who, in destroying the. Romish images, indulged 
a stupid vengeance against the persecuting 
religion of which these statues were the 
symbols. It was a sort of climax of frenzy that 




72 William the Taciturn. 

pervaded the Netherlands from south to north, 
and by its unfortunate example deprived the 
Netherland Reformation of a large number of 
partisans who were waiting for some pretext for 
renouncing it in this time of trial. 

These excesses, however, had the advantage 
of bringing about a concession which long-suf- 
fering had as yet been unable to obtain. On 
the 24th of August the Duchess, trembling lest 
the Iconoclasts should invade Brussels and rav- 
age her own palace, allowed the Prince of 
Orange and his friends to obtain from her very 
large concessions. She signed, under the name 
of an accord, an agreement with the leaguers 
by which the Reformed worship was authorized 
in all places where it already existed, the In- 
quisition was abolished, and the authors of the 
League formally absolved from political crim- 
inality. 

If this agreement had been sincere and dur- 
able there is reason to believe that the peace 
of the Netherlands would for a long time have 
been assured. The confederated nobles were 
satisfied, and the people themselves, always 
prompt in hoping, believed that religious liberty 
was now going, like sunshine after a tempest, to 



William the Taciturn. 73 

make them forget the gloomy and terrible days 
through which they had passed. 

The Prince of Orange did not indulge in this 
delusion. He quieted, however, his distrust, 
and, heeding only the voice of duty as a citizen, 
returned to Antwerp, which his absence had left 
a prey to all the temptations of fanaticism and to 
the fury of the Iconoclasts. He labored anew and 
ardently in the pacification of this city, where re- 
ligious and political differences superabounded, 
and which was a permanent hot-bed of revolution. 

The Protestants had taken possession of the 
devastated churches. William restored them 
to their legitimate possessors, and re-estab- 
lished in them the ancient worship. Three 
Iconoclasts were put to death, and several of the 
ringleaders banished. The Prince then called 
together the chiefs of the Reformed party, and 
established between them and the city magis- 
trates an amicable arrangement. According to 
this arrangement, based on the accord between 
the Leaguers and the Regent, the different Prot- 
estant communions at Antwerp were to have 
three places for worship in the interior of the 
city ; all irritating controversy was forbidden ; 
and, in general, the citizens, without distinction 



74 William the Taciturn. 

of faith, were to abstain, in speech and action, 
from whatever might disturb the public har- 
mony and peace. T 4 his agreement was pro- 
claimed at the Hotel de Viile, the 4th of Sep- 
tember, 1566. 

From Antwerp the Prince of Orange hastened 
to the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and 
Utrecht, of which he was stadtholder, in order 
to establish tranquillity there by similar meas- 
ures. During his absence he confided the com- 
mand of Antwerp to one of his most devoted 
friends, Count Hoogstraaten, a man no less loyal 
than energetic. But while William was thus 
devoting himself, without rest, to the tranquil- 
izing of the public mind, and even exposing 
his life for the maintenance of the royal author- 
ity, the Regent, though praising him in public, 
was secretly calumniating him and denouncing 
him to Philip as the instigator of all the troubles 
and the most dangerous adversary of his power. 

William was well informed of these base ac- 
cusations ; he knew also very well the effect 
they were producing at Madrid. He had, as it 
were, an open eye* on the perfidies of the King, 

*■*■ Ten years long the King placed daily his most secret 
letters in hands which regularly transmitted copies of the cor- 



William the Taciturn. 75 



and was, in one sense, present at the most secret 
councils ot the King. Adroit spies reported to 
him every thing important that transpired at the 
court of Spain, and faithfully informed him of 
all the plans of the most taciturn of despots. 
He had learned that, blinding the people with 
fair words, Philip was aiming only to gain time 
in order to assemble an army and quench in 
blood all the liberties of the country. He was 
forewarned that his own life, as well as that of 
many other of the grandees, was in danger. 
Finally he saw the accord of the 24th of August 
impudently violated, while the Duchess, who 
had received money in order to raise troops, 
began to chase the Reformed from several of 
the towns, and place in them garrisons. It was 
then that, renouncing pacific means, he formed 
the resolution, to use his own expression, " not 
to let the grass grow under his feet," and to put 

respondence to the Prince of Orange, together with a key to 
the ciphers, and every other illustration Which might be re- 
quired. Thus the secrets of the King were always as well 
known to Orange as to himself ; and the Prince being as 
prompt as Philip was hesitating, the schemes would often be 
frustrated before their execution had been commenced. The 
crime of the unfortunate clerk, John de Castillo, was discov- 
ered in the autumn of the year 1581, and he was torn to pieces 
by four horses."— Motley. 



76 William the Taciturn. 

himself in a condition to thwart the plans of the 
King. In view of this end, he invited Count 
Egmont, Admiral Horn, Hoogstraaten, and his 
brother, Lewis of Nassau, to confer with him, 
in order to obviate the dangers which were 
threatening the country. 

These five cavaliers, the most influential of 
the liberal party, had an interview (October 3) 
at Termonde in Flanders. The Prince showed 
them the letters which he had received from 
Spain, and explained to them the necessity of 
holding themselves in readiness to offer resist- 
ance, should circumstances require it. As to 
himself, he said, he was determined not to 
remain in the country to be a witness of the 
sufferings of the people, and to suffer the venge- 
ance which he foresaw. If he could, however, 
count on the co-operation of Egmont and 
Horn, as he was already sure of that of Hoog 
straaten and of Lewis of Nassau, he would not 
hesitate, with the consent of the States-General, 
to repulse force, and to enlist soldiers to oppose 
the invasion of the Spaniards w T ho were prepar- 
ing to massacre the nobility and reduce the 
nation to serfs. Egmont rejected this proposi- 
tion, and expressed an entire confidence in the 



William the Taciturn. 77 

goodness of Philip, and a spirit of absolute 
obedience to the will of the crown. Instead of 
the illustrious general, whose sword was re- 
garded by the people as the firmest support of 
the public liberties, William met in him now only 
a blind and fanatical defender of tyranny. The 
Admiral Horn, without betraying, like Egmont, 
the national cause, likewise refused his co- 
operation, and declared that, " like the Emperor 
Charles, he desired now to become a hermit for 
the rest of his days," and no longer to take part 
in public affairs. An egotistical and whimsical 
man, he was discontented with every body, and 
preferred his own peace to the interests of the 
country. 

Thus' abandoned, at the decisive moment, by 
the two personages who could lend him the 
most effectual help and assure the success of 
his enterprise, William of Orange formed the 
resolution, as he had already announced it, to 
quit the country. With little confidence in the 
character of the ancient Leaguists, he had no 
desire to risk himself with them in a foolhardy 
enterprise ; and he had lost all hope of seeing 
the King convoke the States-General. An 
ordinary mind would have been crushed under 



78 William the Taciturn. 

so many disappointments, and terrified at its 
isolation. The Prince, however, without relax- 
ing his usual vigilance, submitted to await in 
retreat for a proper occasion to act. He re- 
mained in his own domain, awaiting a pretext 
for obtaining his dismissal, which he-had several 
times asked since the malevolent conduct of the 
Duchess toward him. Toward the close of the 
year, however, he felt disposed to address 
another caution to the authorities, and to utter 
a last cry of alarm to save the crown and the 
population from a civil war, which was destined 
like a vast conflagration to devour every thing 
before it. 

In the opening of the following year, (1567,) 
after having generously refused a tender of 
fifty thousand florins which the Legislature of 
Holland had voted to him in consideration of 
his efforts in restoring order, William returned 
to Antwerp, of which he was still commandant. 
Hoogstraaten, who had filled his place during 
his absence in Holland, remained with him on 
his return as his lieutenant. The Prince 
seemed here to limit his activity to consolidat- 
ing order in this city. He was on very bad 
terms with the Regent, to whom he had clearly 



William the Taciturn. 79 

expressed his intention of being no longer the 
plaything of her dissimulation and the tool of a 
policy which he could not esteem. He did not 
conceal even in public his disgust for the con- 
duct of the Government. He allowed the 
Leaguers to levy troops under his own eyes, 
and counseled the magistrates of Flushing and 
Middelburg not to receive garrisons without his 
consent. Manifestly his attitude leaned rather 
toward hostility than toward neutrality to the 
Regency. 

And more still : when the rebels came and 
camped within a half league of Antwerp, after 
having vainly attempted to seize upon the 
island of Walcheren in Zeeland, to hinder a 
Spanish army from their disembarking, William 
did not in the least disturb them, and his 
neutrality had very much the look of a con- 
nivance. But, regarding this resort to arms as 
premature, and governed perhaps by his re- 
pugnance to uniting with the Calvinists, who 
were very numerous in the ranks of the 
Leaguers, he gave, by his inaction, the victory 
to the troops which the Duchess of Parma had 
sent against them, and thus contributed to the 
ruin of his own party, 



8o 



William the Taciturn. 



From the heights of the ramparts the people 
of Antwerp had gazed upon the struggle, which 
terminated so sadly for the friends of national 
independence. The Reformed, who abounded 
in the city, had rushed out in order to help 
their brethren. But the bridges which inter- 
vened between them had been secretly cut the 
night before by the orders of William. Ten 
thousand armed men presented themselves at 
the gates, but were unable to cross the short 
space which separated them from the field of 
battle. In the face of this unexpected obstacle 
they turned back in fury, and resolved in some 
way to force an exit to avenge their brothers. 

The tumult was at a fearful height when the 
Prince of Orange arrived, on horseback, without 
guards, and determined to suppress the sedition 
or perish in the attempt. He was received 
with cries of rage. The multitude stigmatized 
him as a traitor, a Papist, a servant of Anti- 
christ One of the most desperate of them 
even leveled his musket at him, but another 
hand turned aside the murderous weapon. 
William calmly, and with that sovereign author- 
ity which only great spirits and great hearts 
possess, held out against the storm and sue- 



William the Taciturn. 8i 

ceeded finally in making himself heard. Then 
with a firm and persuasive tone he represented 
to the enraged multitude that in depriving them 
of all communication with the leaguers he had 
prevented the city from becoming a prey of the 
conqueror, with whom citizens, poorly armed and 
in disorder, would be incapable of coping. The 
mass -of the population were convinced by this 
reasoning/ and renounced their purpose. But 
the more hot-headed of the Calvinists did not 
lay down their arms, and determined to avenge 
upon the Catholics of Antwerp the triumph of 
the royalist troops outside the city. For two 
days and nights they spread terror in the city, 
and threatened a complete pillage. In this 
pressing danger the Prince of Orange used all 
his influence to separate the Lutherans from 
the Protestant party, and to unite them with 
the adherents of the Romish Church. This 
union having been brought about, the revolted 
were forced to subscribe such terms of peace 
as were submitted to them. Thus for the third 
time Antwerp was saved from ruin by the 
courage and skill of William the Taciturn. 



82 



William the Taciturn. 



CHAPTER VII. 



The Prince of Orange resigns — His interview with Count 
Egmont — His voluntary exile in Germany — His spiritual 
conversion — Cruelties of Alva in the Netherlands — Sacri- 
fices and courage of William in the interest of the Prov- 
inces — His submissiveness to Providence. 



FTER having finished his task at Ant- 



werp, the Prince of Orange wrote to the 
Regent to offer to her definitively his resigna- 
tion. The pretext which he had been waiting 
for in order to quit the Netherlands had been 
furnished him by the new oath which Margaret 
was now exacting of all the chief functionaries. 
They were all required to swear to the King a 
passive obedience, promising to execute the- 
orders of the Government, whatever they might 
be, without distinction of places or persons. 
William had positively and on several occasions 
refused to make such an engagement. It was 
only provisorily, and because circumstances 
rendered his concurrence indispensable, that he 
had been able thus far to avoid taking this 
oath. But the defeat of the Leaguers under the 




William the Taciturn. 83 

walls of Antwerp was not of a nature to permit 
him much longer to enjoy this immunity. His 
letter of resignation anticipated the summons 
that was about to be served upon him, and 
permitted him to seek, in retirement, inward 
strength and a refuge against the blows of 
Philip. The Duchess not being able to draw 
him to Brussels, where, as he had heard, it was 
purposed " to play a trick upon him," dispatched 
to him in turn her own secretary and Count 
Egmont to persuade him to submit, and not 
to quit the service of the King. 

The Prince remained unshaken. " How," 
asked he, " am I to take an oath without con- 
ditions, and which might lead to acts contrary 
to my conscience, imposing upon me the obliga- 
tion to attack the laws of the country and to ex- 
ecute edicts which I have always disapproved ? 
In obeying this oath I could not hesitate to 
conduct to the scaffold my own friends, my 
relatives, my children, and even my wife, who 
is a Lutheran ! " Nor did he stop at this, 
earnest refusal. He was well aware that the 
most cruel of the generals of Philip, the Duke 
of Alva, had just been appointed commander of 

the army which had long been destined against 

6 



84 William the Taciturn. 

the Provinces. He knew also that a secret con- 
demnation weighed upon Egmont and himself ; 
he endeavored to open the eyes of the Count 
and to make him see the abyss that yawned 
beneath his feet. He conjured him in vain to 
go with himself into exile, and there to await 
the favorable moment to come to the aid of the 
nation, instead of marching blindly into the 
hands of the hangman. Egmont spoke with 
confidence of the goodness of the King, arid of 
the claims which he had acquired upon his 
gratitude by his devotion and his brilliant serv- 
ices. (He had, at the head of the troops of 
Philip, gained at Saint-Quentin and at Grave- 
lines two signal victories over the French 
army.) 

"Alas, dear Egmont," answered William of 
Orange, " this goodness of the King upon which 
you count will be your ruin. Would to God 
that I might be mistaken ! But I see only too 
clearly that you are simply the bridge which 
the Spaniards will use to invade our country, 
and which they will destroy as soon as they 
have passed it." On uttering these words the 
Prince embraced his old friend, and, in tears, 
bade him farewell. He foresaw only with too 



William the Taciturn. 85 

good ground that he should never see the 
Count again. 

The very next day he took leave, by writing, 
of the Regent, and after passing a few days at 
Breda, in Holland, to arrange some private 
affairs, on the 28th of April, 1567, some three 
weeks after quitting Antwerp, set out with his 
three brothers and all his family for Dillemburg, 
the residence of his ancestors in the Duchy of 
Nassau. A short time after his arrival in this 
town Vaudenesse, the private secretary of 
Philip II., and his own secret agent at Madrid, 
wrote to hrm that he had read letters of the 
King to the Duke of Alva, recommending Alva 
" to arrest the Prince as soon as possible, and 
not to allow his trial to last more than twenty- 
four hours.' , 

The departure of William was the signal for 
a general emigration. The League was dis- 
solved. The cities that had revolted opened, 
one after the other, their gates to the troops of 
the Regent. Valenciennes had yielded and 
undergone the most terrible vengeance. The 
higher nobility for the most, part rivaled each 
other in servility, in order if possible to efface 
the memory of their former opposition, and to 



86 William the Taciturn. 



save their fortunes and their lives. The ap- 
proach of the Duke of Alva caused a general 
terror/ Margaret redoubled her vigor against 
the Reformed, and made it, so to speak, a point 
of honor to demonstrate that she could have 
done the work without him. " There was 
scarcely a village/' says a chronicler of the 
time, " which did not furnish two or three hun- 
dred victims to the executioner." The Prot- 
estant chapels were rased to the ground, and 
their timbers used in constructing gibbets. 
Chased away from all the cities, not even ex- 
cepting Antwerp, which had made its submis- 
sion as soon as the Prince had left it, the 
Reformed fled in great multitudes to Germany 
and England, as at the beginning of the 
persecutions. 

When the Duke of Alva arrived in the 
Netherlands he found his work greatly facili- 
tated by the Duchess of Parma. The people, 
to use the remark of another, were already 
penned ; he had only to raise his arm and 
slaughter. It was on the 22d of August, 1567, 
that he entered Brussels with his army, which 
was composed of the flower of the Spanish 
soldiery, which he had gone to Italy to collect, 



William the Taciturn. 87 

where they had learned the habit of fighting 
and conquering. He hastened to put his hand 
to the work of extermination. While he was 
erecting his scaffolds without any opposition, 
the Prince of Orange, surrounded by a few 
friends, was the only one who thought seriously 
of resisting him. His soul, however, was almost 
overwhelmed by the misfortunes of his country 
and the annihilation of his party. 

It was in this state of mind, surrounded by 
all the objects which recalled to him his child- 
hood, that the noble proscript, saddened at the 
cruel disappointments of his present position, 
and the uncertainty of the future, jelt to re- 
kindle within him, under the ordeal of trial, the 
pure faith of his earlier years. He. felt the 
need of being consoled, and of asking of a 
Power higher than that of man the means of 
delivering his country from the yoke of the 
stranger. Moreover, he had already made 
shipwreck in his endeavor to triumph by mere 
politics, and to found a nation of freemen on 
the principle of neutrality, or rather indifference, 
to the various forms of religion. He had not 
yet discovered the intimate relation of the civil 
institutions of a country to its religious faith ; 



88 



William the Taciturn. 



in his indifference he had persisted in not 
seeing that the Reformation of the Church in 
the Netherlands was the indispensable condition 
of civil -liberty. 

There was found, as if by a special Prov- 
idence, among his companions in exile one who 
was admirably adapted to lead his mind to the 
truth. Springing from the Protestant school 
of Switzerland, he combined with the sincerest 
patriotism an admirable zeal for the Gospel : it 
was Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde, one of the 
promoters of the League of the nobles. A deep 
intimacy sprang up between William and him. 
Marnix, a^true envoy of God to the future Lib- 
erator of the Netherland Reformation, found in 
their common affliction the path to his heart. 
He resolved to endeavor to be the means of 
converting him. He used in convincing him 
all the resources of a mind no less deep than 
judicious, and practiced in all theological ques- 
tions. No one in the Netherlands enjoyed 
greater esteem than he in matters of religion, 
and none was more worthy of such esteem. It 
was he who had drawn up the Act of Union of 
the Reformed Church at Antwerp, the first 
Constitution of the Church of Holland. Full 



William the Taciturn. 89 

both of zeal and of science, he carried into the 
discussions of doctrines the sound judgment of 
a statesman and the impetuosity of a soldier. 
" The cold and reserved mind of William," says 
M. Quinet, " could not hold out against these 
repeated approaches. He renounced his Cath- 
olic prejudices. . . . The Taciturn embraced 
the faith of the young apostle ; this was the 
nucleus of their heroic friendship. 

"Hence, when the Prince of Orange re-entered 
into the struggle, in 1568, we see an entirely 
new man. He is no longer the worldly noble- 
man who intrigues with parties and awaits the 
strokes of fortune. . . . Henceforth there is not 
a moment of trouble or hesitation. ' He has 
concluded,' says Marnix, 'to stake all for all/ 
And it is, in fact, William who from now on will 
raise up all hearts wherever discouraged ; he 
bears sway over the multitude, reads through 
treacherous hearts, sees light in the darkness ; 
he brings back from his exile an armor that is 
invincible." And this armor is simply that 
which every faithful Christian puts on; it is 
the assurance of help divine, and the desire to 
combat for the Gospel as much as for his coun- 
try. Henceforth, in the eyes of the Prince of 



go William the Taciturn. 

Orange, the cause of the Netherlands is, as 
with the martyrs of Valenciennes and Ant- 
werp, the cause of Christ itself. The inward 
change which has taken place in him manifests 
itself in acts of an unparalleled boldness and 
disinterestedness. 

The Netherlands were crushed under the 
Duke of Alva. Within a. few months he had 
broken all the springs of that brave nation. The 
Council of Tumults, whose cruelties have so 
well merited for it the stigma of the Council of 
Blood, which was established on the ruins of all 
other institutions, was the unwearied purveyor 
of the stake and the scaffold. This supreme 
and sole court had no other will than that of 
Alva himself, and was destined to condemn 
without proof, and in spite of all law, not merely 
actual heretics, but also those who had ever " by 
sympathy or by surprise " questioned the right of 
the King to strip the Provinces of all their liber- 
ties. Within three months the country had, as it 
were, become desolate and silent like a vast 
grave-yard. The population resembled that 
philosopher of antiquity who, seeing the blood 
flow from his open veins, had no longer either 
the strength or the courage to check it and to 



William the Taciturn. 91 

live. Exhausted and expiring, it was now- 
"simply a corpse, and thus vividly realized the 
idea of obedience which Philip, subservient to 
the rule of the Jesuits, demanded of all his 
subjects. 

The Prince of Orange had been cited, with 
the other fugitive lords, before the Council of 
Blood. The Duke of Alva, who had just 
finished building at Antwerp a fortress for the 
support of the Inquisition and the Spanish 
despotism, would have been glad to- pay his 
respects to Philip by sending to him, as his 
New Year's gift for 1568, the news of the 
death of the Taciturn and of the other noblemen 
whom Margaret had allowed to escape. William 
answered this citation by a laconic and dignified 
refusal. 

The Duke indulged his vengeance by seizing 
upon the eldest son of the Prince, the Count of 
Buren, who had remained at Louvain to con- 
tinue his studies, and for whom his tender youth 
seemed a sufficient protection against retalia- 
tion.' The Professors of the University, to 
whom this youth of thirteen years had been 
confided, reclaimed him in vain. The Duke 
sent him to Spain to the King, who kept him 



92 William the Taciturn. 



as a hostage and perverted him to Popery.* In 
this same month (February, 1568) Philip con- 
firmed a decree of the Inquisition which con- 
demned to death, with a few exceptions, all the 
inhabitants of the Netherlands, in the quality 
of heretics. This sentence greatly simplified 
and accelerated the work of the Council of 
Blood. Alva had now only to choose, among 
these millions of human beings, the victims 
which he preferred to immolate. Nero, who re- 
gretted not to be able to massacre at a single 
stroke all his people, had not, however, been 
witty enough to find, as did the Very Catholic 
Philip II., the means of realizing his monstrous 
desire. This bloody folly stands by itself in 
history. 

The entire nation was devoted to the scaffold ; 

*The Count of Buren was thirteen years old when seized 
by the minions of Alva, He seems to have had little dislike 
to his captivity. "He set forth," says Motley, "without 
reluctance for that gloomy and terrible land of Spain, whence 
so rarely a Flemish traveler has returned. A changeling, as 
it were, from his cradle, he seemed completely transformed by 
his Spanish tuition; for he was educated and not sacrificed by 
Philip. When he returned to the Netherlands, after a twenty 
years' residence in Spain, it was difficult to detect in his gloomy 
brow, saturnine character, and Jesuitical habits, a trace of the 
generous spirit which characterized that race of heroes, the 
house of Orange-Xassau. " 



William the Taciturn. 93 

the Counts Egmont and Horn were arrested ; 
the poor and the rich, the great lords and the 
humble multitude, were bound and trembling 
as lambs for the slaughter; Orange was con- 
demned by default, as well as the other exiled 
nobles, his goods were confiscated, and his 
eldest son kidnapped ; all the chances were on 
the side of the Inquisition, and a formidable 
army, commanded by the most skillful general 
of the age, seemed to assure this state of things 
forever. But it is precisely now that William, 
confiding in the justice of his cause, and ashamed 
of his long inaction — William, converted now to 
the true Gospel, and with his eye fixed upon the 
Captain and Finisher of the faith — undertakes 
to snatch his unhappy fellow-citizens from the 
hands of their slaughterers. He begins the 
enrolling of troops, " in order to hinder," as he 
himself said, " the ruin with which his country 
was threatened by the ferocity of the Spaniards, 
and to maintain the privileges solemnly ratified 
by his Majesty and his ancestors, and to prevent 
the extirpation of all religion by the edicts, and 
to save the sons and daughters of the country 
from falling into abject servitude." He busies 
himself in obtaining allies in Germany, and 



94 William the Taciturn. 

makes appeal to all the friends of the Reforma- 
tion, which he desires to rescue in the Nether- 
lands. His brother Lewis nobly seconds his 
plans, and busies himself in recruiting soldiers. 
And then, as the sums which William had 
gathered for organizing his army prove insuffi- 
cient, he sells his jewels, his plate, his wardrobe, 
and his furniture. His fortune, his family, his 
life, as Marnix expresses it — he risks every 
thing for the triumph of his principles. 

At the moment when the Duke of Alva is 
trampling without resistance upon the seventeen 
Provinces, the Prince of Orange passes the 
Meuse — on the night of the 5 th of October, 1 568 
— at the head of twenty-four thousand men, and 
advances by way of Liege into Brabant with 
the purpose of repairing the disaster which, 
after a fruitless victory, the patriot troops had 
suffered in Friesland two months previously. 
He had also to avenge the death of Egmont and 
of Horn, who had recently been executed, and 
that of his brother Adolphus, who had fallen 
gloriously on the field of battle, on which the im- 
petuous Count Lewis had come near perishing 
also. 

The religious feelings of William at this 



William the Taciturn. 95 

epoch are plainly manifest in his correspond- 
ence with his family. The sincerity and the 
depth of his faith appear there under the most 
favorable colors. Instead of reproaching Lewis 
for having by manifest imprudence rushed 
into ruin, he addresses to him affectionate 
consolations, and manifests a remarkable resig- 
nation. " Since it has seemed good to God 
thus," he writes to him in concluding, " we must 
exercise patience and not lose courage, sub- 
mitting ourselves to his holy will, which, for 
my part, I am resolved to do under all circum- 
stances, persevering in his work, with his all- 
powerful support." On the eve of setting out 
on the campaign he wrote to his wife : " I shall 
set out to-morrow, and I cannot, upon my honor, 
tell you, with any degree of certainty, when I 
shall return, or when I shall see you again. I 
have resolved to commit myself into the hands 
of God and to be guided by his good pleasure. 
I see clearly enough that I am destined to pass 
my life in labor and suffering ; but I submit, 
since it is the will of the Almighty, knowing 
well that I have merited more severe chasten- 
ings. I simply ask of him the strength to bear 
all with patience," 



g6 William the Taciturn. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



The Prince of Orange enters upon a campaign — He is defeated 
and passes into France — His relations with Coligny — He 
returns to Germany — His poverty — His constancy — Song 
of the Gueux — Capture of Brill — Risings in several Prov- 
inces — Toleration of the Prince. 



HE Prince of Orange had prefaced his ex- 



A pedition into the Netherlands by warm ap- 
peals to the people. " We take up arms," said 
he, in the chief of these proclamations, " in 
order to oppose the tyrannical violence of the 
Spaniards, with the aid of the God of Mercy, 
who detests the shedding of blood. Fully dis- 
posed to risk our life and all our earthly goods 
for this cause, we have raised and hold now in 
readiness, thanks be to God ! an excellent army 
of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, equipped 
entirely at our expense. We call upon all the 
faithful subjects of the Netherlands to come to 
our aid. Let them lay to heart the distress of 
the country, the danger of a perpetual slavery 
for themselves and for their children, and the 




William the Taciturn. 97 

complete ruin of evangelical religion." ... It 
was impossible for him to remain longer a quiet 
spectator of the sufferings of his fellow-country- 
men, and he supplicated them to unite with him 
for the defense of the common cause. These 
appeals met with little or no echo in the hearts 
either of the nobles or of the people, who were 
utterly paralyzed by fear, and from whom the 
rout of Count Lewis in Friesland had taken away 
all hope of success. 

Hence William received neither provisions 
nor money from the country which he came to 
emancipate. Reduced to his own resources, he 
determined by a decisive blow to raise his for- 
tune, and sought the opportunity of meeting 
the Spaniards in a great battle. But the Duke 
of Alva, who was acquainted with his critical 
situation, was careful to avoid giving him the 
occasion which he sought. He persistently 
refused battle, and thus occasioned him to weary 
and exhaust his forces in the neighborhood 
of cities which remained closed against him. 
Then, after by this cunning course having 
harassed him until a large number of his sol- 
diers, for the most part mercenaries, had aban- 
doned him, he had little difficulty in defeating 



98 William the Taciturn. 

him at the passage of the Geta, a few leagues 
from Brussels, and thus throwing him, with the 
remnant of his army, into a second exile. 

This time it was in France that the 
Prince of Orange sought a refuge and con- 
ducted the soldiers which remained to him, 
declaring openly his intention of giving assist- 
ance to his co-religionists, then engaged in a 
new civil war. To Charles IX., who forbade 
him to enter with his army upon French terri- 
tory, he replied : " In my quality of true Chris- 
tian, I am in honor and conscience bound to 
labor with all my forces for the advancement of 
the true religion in all places. " . . . Moreover, 
he assured the King that in case he should 
perceive that the Protestants were pursuing 
any other object than the liberty of their con- 
science and the security of their persons and 
goods, he would be far from continuing to them 
his support, but would employ all the forces of 
his army to exterminate them. But this new 
enterprise resulted in nothing. His troops 
would not second the designs of their general, 
and reduced him to the necessity of disbanding 
them. Only twelve hundred men consented to 
share his fortune, and to place themselves under 



William the Taciturn. 99 



the standard of Coligny . His two brothers, Lewis 
and Henry, the latter a young man of eighteen 
who had quit the University to indulge in the 
chivalric spirit of his family, went along with him. 

The Prince, we have reason to believe, sym- 
pathized deeply with Admiral Coligny, and 
esteemed himself happy in becoming, in 1569, 
the helper and friend of him whom he had him- 
self fought at the beginning of his career in the 
wars of Spain against France. There were be- 
tween these two men, both of them of a brave 
and concentrated character, many points of 
resemblance. However, Poligny had, by his 
advanced age and his long military service, 
a renown and an experience before which 
William could but reverently «bow. It was the 
Admiral who turned the attention of William to 
the great advantages which might be drawn 
from the maritime instincts and position of the 
Netherlands. He suggested to him the propri- 
ety of giving a strict organization to that large 
number of Netherland pirates or privateers 
whom the persecutions and poverty had thrown 
into this career, and who, under the name of 
gueux of the sea, were partially organized and 

engaged in taking vengeance upon the com- 

1 



100 



William the Taciturn. 



merce of Spain for the cruelties of the Duke 
of Alva. 

Hence when, at the close of the year, William 
returned to Germany to prosecute the great 
object of his life, his first work was to reform 
the abuses which had unavoidably crept into his 
improvised fleet, and to introduce into it the 
most rigorous discipline. No one could be 
received on board as soldier or sailor without 
furnishing evidence " of being of an honest 
name and of good repute." In order to exercise 
any command it was required that the person 
should be a native Netherlander, save when 
provided with a special recommendation from 
the Prince. All prizes were to be distributed 
on the basis of a fixed rule. And, finally, each 
ship was to carry a minister charged with 
preaching the word of God, and with encour- 
aging piety among the crew. These measures 
were a reproduction of the discipline which 
reigned in the army of Coligny. 

William had brought back salutary lessons 
from his sojourn in France, and had studied a 
grand model of unwearying perseverance and 
austere virtue. Never had his confidence in 
the providence of God been so severely tried ; 



William the Taciturn. 



ioi 



never had his own cause appeared more hope- 
less ; and yet, thanks to his Christian convic- 
tions ! never had his thoughts been more serene 
and exalted. A spirit hitherto unknown to his 
heart sustained and animated him in his dis- 
tress ; he would not allow his hope to be shaken, 
but continued his work of active self-sacrifice. 
Abandoned by the great of the earth, who are 
"as unstable as water," since the unfortunate 
result of his short campaign, and without any 
other support than the members of his own 
heroic family, he did not lose courage, and failed 
not of his glorious mission. 

He wrote to his brother, Count John of Nas- 
sau, to move heaven and earth to procure for 
him the means of paying the arrearages of his 
troops. He caused to be sold, piece by piece, 
at the fairs of Germany, whatever yet remained 
of his furniture and plate. He was reduced by 
his generosity to live with the very strictest 
economy ; and he supported his poverty in a 
manner that was no less noble than touching. 
He, the high nobleman, born and raised in the 
luxury of princes, the companion and friend of 
emperors, subjected himself to all the priva- 
tions of a bankrupt exile, and descended even 



102 William the Taciturn. 



to the most prosy details of the material life 
with a good grace and a perfect cheerfulness. 
" I pray you send to me by the bearer," wrote 
he to his home, " the little pacing pony which 
the Admiral gave me, in case that she is in 
good condition." He even gave special direc- 
tions as to the mending of certain garments, 
and asked that certain pairs of stockings be 
sent to him. Notwithstanding this state of 
poverty, he almost entirely forgot his own wants 
in caring for those of even his most obscure 
friends. " You will see," said he in a letter to 
his brother, "that Affenstein is in need of a 
horse ; I beg you have examination made 
in your neighborhood, and if possible find a 
good horse, and send it to me with the price, 
and I will send you the money." 

He continued, despite all obstacles, to prepare 
for a new campaign against the Spanish tyranny. 
He sent emissaries wherever he had reason to 
hope for any help. Especially he made earnest 
efforts with the Government of Germany, which 
had, like him, embraced the cause of the Refor- 
mation. Conceding, in language elevated and 
loyal, and which went straight to the heart, the 
reverses of his last attempt, he made a renewed 



William the Taciturn. 103 

effort to revive the hopes of the partisans of the 
liberty of conscience and of evangelical Chris- 
tianity, and pressed them to come to his help. 
These earnest labors and efforts were not fruit- 
less. William saw his forces slowly but con- 
tinually increasing ; the extraordinary and vex- 
atious imposts which Alva had, for a year, been 
endeavoring to impose on the Provinces, had 
stirred up a very general opposition. The 
Prince had reason to count on this revival of a 
public spirit to commence anew, and under 
more favorable circumstances, the great strug- 
gle, and he hastened his preparations. His 
friend Marnix had rekindled the patriotic enthu- 
siasm of the masses by an admirable song, 
which stirred all hearts and filled them with 
renewed confidence m the as yet unlucky hero 
whose whole soul was absorbed in the interest 
of the Netherlands. This hymn exerted on the 
Netherland populace, in the course of the 
revolution, a magic power similar to that of the 
Marseillaise in France. 

It is the Prince himself who is made to speak 
in these strophes, which breathed of the strong 
faith of the first days of the Reformation : 

" I, William of Nassau, born of German blood, 



104 William the Taciturn. 

have remained faithful to my adopted land even 
to the last extremity. I have resolved to live in 
the law of God, and for this cause I am banished, 
far from country and friends ; but God will use 
me as a good instrument ; he will bring me back 
to the helm. 

" Ye men of loyal heart, all oppressed as you 
are, God will not abandon you ; ye who strive 
to live righteously, pray to him day and night 
that he may give me the strength to come to 
your succor. 

" I have spared for you neither my life nor 
my goods, and my brothers, also of high name, 
have done as I. The Count Adolphus fell in 
Friesland on the field of battle ; he awaits, in 
the life eternal, the final judgment. 

" Be thou my buckler and strength, O my 
God and Saviour ! in thee I trust ; forsake me not. 
Guide thy faithful servant ; help me to break the 
tyranny which weighs heavily upon my heart. 

" Even as David was compelled to hide him- 
self from the tyrant Saul, so also have I and 
my noble friends been obliged to flee ; but God 
raised up David from the depths of the abyss ; 
in Israel he gave to him a mighty kingdom. 

" If it be my Lord's will, my entire royal 



William the Taciturn. 105 

desire is to die honorably upon the field of 
battle, and, as a royal hero, to conquer an eter- 
nal kingdom. 

" Nothing grieves me more in my distress 
than to see you, O Spaniards, laying waste the 
fair land of the King. When I think of it, O, 
dear and noble Netherlands, my generous heart 
weeps in blood. 

" With my single force, I, a Prince of noble 
line, have risen up against the pride and power 
of the tyrant. The fresh graves of Maestricht * 
attest to my power. My brave horsemen were 
seen galloping across the plain, 

" Had it been the Lord's will, I would have 
driven far from you the fearful tempest ; but 
the Lord on high, who rules all things — we 
must ever praise him — has willed otherwise." 

These verses of a so strongly biblical flavor — 
but of which no translation can give more than 
the faintest conception — were circulated and 
sung from one end of the Provinces to the other. 
It was in singing them that, on the 1st of 
April, 1572, the gueux of the sea, those hardy 
seamen whom the Prince of Orange had re- 

* Allusion to a slight advantage gained at the crossing of 
the Meuse. 



io6 William the Taciturn. 

cently regulated and subjected to discipline, 
surprised the fortress of Brill, seized upon the 
city, and there laid the foundation stone of the 
Republic of the Netherlands. This bold feat 
of arms transferred the theater of war to the 
coasts and upon the sea, and revealed to Hol- 
land its element of strength and the tactics which 
it should in the future successfully employ. 

This unexpected success disconcerted for a 
moment the Prince of Orange, who had not yet 
finished his preparations in Germany, and who 
was averse to rash undertakings. He doubted 
the practicability of holding the place, and 
feared lest the captors should dearly pay for 
their premature joy. But his doubts did not 
last long. Five days after their brilliant ex- 
ploit, the gueux not only showed themselves 
capable of defending their prize, but they also 
entered Flushing, which welcomed them as 
liberators. Evidently the capture of Brill was 
not a mere happy accident ; it was the begin- 
ning of a revolution. Almost all the important 
cities of Holland and Zeeland hoisted, like 
Flushing, the banner of Orange. It was so 
also in Gelders, in Overyssel, and in the Prov- 
inces of Utrecht and Friesland. 



William the Taciturn. 107 

William, however, and the people who ac- 
knowledged his authority, did not as yet think of ■ 
repudiating the superior authority of Philip II. ; 
they simply contemplated the throwing off of 
the bloody yoke of Alva. In virtue of a curious 
fiction, explained by the prestige of royalty in 
that age, and also in part by the religious 
respect which the Reformed Church, after the 
example of the primitive Church, professed for 
the established authorities, the insurgent army 
was regarded as simply making war against a 
governor false to his duties ; they cast upon 
the Viceroy the entire responsibility for the 
oppression and crimes from which they sought 
emancipation. All the magistrates elected in 
the cities where the insurgents gained the 
upper hand took an oath of fidelity to the 
King of Spain. The Prince of Orange was 
considered simply as the stadtholder of Philip, 
and commanded, in Holland and Zeeland, 
under the same title as in 1559. 

Being still retained in Germany at the work 
of organizing an army, William delegated the 
powers conferred upon him by the people to 
one of his lieutenants, who arrived on the 2d 
of June in the insurgent Provinces. The 



108 William the Taciturn. 

written instructions given to this lieutenant are 
very significant. William ordered him rl to see 
that the word of God should be preached, with- 
out, however, in any respect interfering with 
the Roman Catholics in the exercise of their 
worship ; to recall the fugitives and such as had 
been banished because of their religion ; and to 
exact of all the magistrates and officers of cor- 
porations the oath of fidelity," which contained 
the obligation "to offer no obstacle to the 
Roman Catholic worship." This spirit of tolera- 
tion in the face of the scaffolds of the Duke of 
Alva, and in an age which understood this 
principle so imperfectly, is to the everlasting 
honor of the Liberator of the Netherlands. 



William the Taciturn. 109 



CHAPTER IX. 



New Campaign of William — Meeting of the States-General at 
Dort — Liberality of the Provinces — Orange, elected Dicta- 
tor, limits his power — He captures Roermond — He cen- 
sures the reprisals of his soldiers — His success checked by 
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew — His disaster before 
Mons — He retreats into Holland. 



HE Prince of Orange was not content 



with directing the revolutionary movement 
from a distance. As soon as he had collected 
sufficient troops he crossed the Rhine and took 
position, as four years previously, in the plains 
of Belgium, in the very midst of the Spanish 
forces. This maneuver was no less wise than 
bold and daring : it enabled him to receive more 
easily than elsewhere the expected reinforce- 
ments from France, and to raise the siege of 
Mons, which had been surprised and captured 
by the Count Lewis of Nassau (that Bayard of 
the Netherlands) a few weeks after the daring 
stroke of the gueax of the sea. 

However, notwithstanding his confidence in 
the promises of supplies made to him by the 




no William the Taciturn. 



insurgent cities, William was not forgetful of 
the straits of his preceding campaign, and, be- 
fore attacking the enemy, he asked with his 
usual eloquence that the pay of his army should 
be assured for three months. " Let your money 
not be so dear to you," said he, " as to sacrifice 
your lives, your wives, your children, and all 
your descendants down to the latest generation. 
Bring not upon yourselves by your love of gold 
this sin and shame ; bring not destruction upon 
us who have so sincerely labored to succor you. 
Think of the contempt of foreign nations, of the 
crime which you would commit against God, of 
the bloody yoke which you would impose for- 
ever upon your children, if you should seek 
subterfuges, and if you should hinder us from 
entering upon a campaign with the troops 
which we have raised. On the other hand, 
think of the inestimable benefits which you will 
confer upon your country by aiding us to de- 
liver it from the power of the wolves and 
vultures of Spain." 

Such words did not fail to stir up the public 
conscience. The representatives of Holland 
hastened to respond to them. They assem- 
bled at Dort, July 15th, in conformity to 



William the Taciturn. hi 

the desire of the Prince, who sent thither 
Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde to represent him. 
This noble delegate addressed the assembly 
in a discourse full of reason and enthusiasm. 
He passed in review the past efforts and sacri- 
fices of William of Orange. He made allusion 
to the cruel disappointment of the Prince in 
1568, when he saw himself compelled to with- 
draw with his troops, in default of supplies of 
money, of sympathy, and shelter. And yet he 
had not lost courage, nor given up the cause of 
his thankless country ; and now, when, thanks 
to God ! the Netherland nation seemed to have 
come to a consciousness of their true interests, 
and when so many cities had declared against 
the tyrant, he found himself again under great 
embarrassments. He had bankrupted himself 
in the service of the national cause, and, by dint 
of importunity, had obtained from his relatives 
and friends funds sufficient to place on foot 
a new army. But he had exhausted both his 
resources and his credit, and, after having suc- 
ceeded in raising troops, he was now unable to 
pay them. What a chagrin for him, and what 
a misfortune for the country, should the Con- 
gress not furnish him now with the means of 



112 William the Taciturn. 

marching against the enemy ! " Awake, there- 
fore, to your true interests ! " exclaimed the 
orator, " stir up your zeal and that of your 
countrymen ; seize by the forelock an opportu- 
nity the like of which was perhaps never before 
offered ! " 

Under the impression of such words, these 
men who had refused to grant to the Duke of Alva 
a general tax of ten per centum, or an impost 
of the like ratio on merchandise or movable 
property, now put unanimously their fortunes 
and their life at the disposition of the Prince of 
Orange. It was resolved that the necessary 
sum should be raised by a general tax, and by 
loans which should be made by the wealthy and 
the clergy. Subscriptions were started through- 
out the country for the voluntary contributions 
of the patriots, who contributed their furniture, 
their jewels, and their gold and silver plate 
with an enthusiastic generosity. The repre- 
sentatives also proclaimed William the sole 
legitimate stadtholder of the King of Spain in 
Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, and Utrecht, and 
promised to use all their influence to bring the 
other provinces under his direction. They 
authorized him to choose at his own discretion 



William the Taciturn. 113 

the Admiral who should conduct the maritime 
operations, while he should act by land at the 
head of his army. As the Prince had already, 
at the organization of the gueux of the sea, con- 
fided this post to the capturer of Brill, (the 
Count de la Marck,) the Deputies ratified his 
commission. William authorized this old chief 
of the Holland corsairs to raise troops, to receive 
the oath of fidelity of insurgent cities, to furnish 
them with garrisons, to re-establish the local 
laws, the municipal rights, and the ancient 
privileges which had been abolished. He was 
authorized to restore confiscated properties, and 
to confirm or change, as the case should require, 
the magistrates of the different localities. It 
was especially enjoined upon him to guarantee 
in every place the liberty of worship, and to 
protect the Catholic and Protestant clergy 
against the insults of the fanatics of either 
religion. This latter article had been presented 
by Marnix to the Representatives as a condition 
essential to the concurrence of the Prince, and 
it figured in the first rank in their arrangements. 
The war of the Xetherland nation against the 
tyranny of Spain was not, in the eyes of the 
hero who directed it, worthy of succeeding save 



H4 William the Taciturn. 

on condition of respecting and defending the 
sacred rights of conscience. 

The Prince was invested by the Assembly at 
Dort with sovereign power in the northern 
provinces of the Netherlands. Had he been 
an ambitious man he would have gladly accepted 
this authority. But as he- had no other object 
than the emancipation of his country, he an- 
nounced publicly, in an act supplementary to 
the deliberation of the delegates, that he 
" would neither do nor order any thing without 
the consent of the Representatives, seeing that 
they understood better than he the situation 
and character of the inhabitants." And he 
proceeded now, without delay, to justify their 
confidence, and, on the 23d of July, captured 
the town of Roermond, and thus inaugurated, by 
a triumph, his new campaign. 

The nobleness of his character was strikingly 
shown on this occasion. His soldiers having 
exercised a bloody retaliation upon the enemy, 
by killing some priests and monks, whom they 
regarded, not without reason, as the mainspring 
of the misfortunes of the Netherlands, he 
issued a proclamation ordering all his adherents, 
on pain of death, to respect the rights of all 



William the Taciturn. 115 

persons, whether Catholics or Protestants, and to 
protect the public worship in the churches of 
both communions. If he did not punish the 
guilty ones, but confined himself to a prevent- 
ing of such excesses in the future by issuing 
this public censure, it is because he had to do 
with intractable and rude mercenaries who 
would have abandoned him had he proceeded 
to strike them without forewarning them ; even 
as it was he could not induce them to advance, 
because the towns of Holland had not yet for- 
warded the money to pay them. As soon as 
he received it, however, he continued his march. 
The villages and towns opened to him their 
gates with enthusiasm. Fortune seemed finally 
to repent of her obstinacy and incline toward 
his cause. 

Every thing promised a brilliant campaign. 
The Admiral, Coligny, wrote to the Prince that 
he was going soon to bring to him, with the 
approbation of Charles IX., fifteen thousand 
Huguenots of well-tested firmness and bravery. 
Already strong in the sympathies of the coun- 
try where he was fighting, and encouraged by 
his first successes, William, on the eve of re- 
ceiving such precious help, had good reason to 

' 8 



r 



116 William the Taciturn. 

believe himself about to complete the work of 
his life, and was rejoicing in the thought of soon 
seeing u his beloved Netherlands " independent, 
and the Duke of Alva in his own power. A 
catastrophe, however, no less horrible than un- 
expected, intervened, like an earthquake, and 
dispelled all these fair hopes. 

At the moment when the Prince was count- 
ing on the support of the Protestants of France, 
he learned the appalling news of the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew, (August 24, 1572.) "It 
was," said he, "like a stroke of a battle-ax." 
He felt that he would never recover from it, 
and continued hostilities with a sad presenti- 
ment of defeat. 

It only remained for him to hope in God, and 
to endeavor to gain a decisive battle, in order 
to retrieve his fortune. The Duke of Alva lay 
quietly in camp before Mons, hindering him 
from introducing reinforcements into the place, 
where his besieged brother was now reduced -to 
the greatest straits. Alva was opposing to his 
adversary the same inertia as in 1568, and did 
not doubt a moment of obtaining 'the same 
result. He permitted the patriot army to 
approach within a half league of his intrench- 



William the Taciturn. 119 

ments, and did not offer to stir. On the night 
of the 1 2th of September, however, one of his 
most daring officers at the head of six hundred 
chosen men, clothed in such a manner as to be 
able to recognize each other in the obscurity, 
penetrated into the camp of the Prince of 
Orange. The sentinels were slain, and the entire 
army, surprised in the midst of slumber, became 
the prey of the Spaniards, who made of it a 
great carnage. Certain ones of them, conducted 
by their chief in person, proceeded toward the 
tent of the Taciturn. He was in a profound 
sleep as well as his two guards. At the foot of 
his bed lay a little spaniel of which he was 
very fond. This faithful animal heard the noise 
of approaching footsteps, and, as if from a supe- 
rior instinct, seemed to comprehend the danger 
which threatened his master. He sprang to 
his pillow and scratched the face of the sleeper, 
barking with all his might. William immedi- 
ately awoke, and had only time to spring upon 
his horse and flee. The Spaniards a moment 
afterward entered his tent, and, furious at not 
finding him, slaughtered his servants and secre- 
taries, who were on the point of fleeing. Had 
it not been for the vigilance of his dog, 



120 William the Taciturn. 



the Prince of Orange, would have inevitably 
lost his life, and in the most ignominious man- 
ner. He would have been dragged to Brussels, 
and, like Egmont and Horn, have offered to the 
Duke of Alva the spectacle, and to the multi- 
tude the example, of a great nobleman decapi- 
tated for high treason. 

The massacre continued in the camp until the 
Spaniards, by setting on fire the tents, had 
themselves revealed their own feebleness. The 
patriots, awakened to this fact, prepared to 
crush them. But while they were rallying 
themselves the enemy escaped. 

This disaster, however, was a less stroke to 
the Prince than the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew. It simply gave the last stroke to his 
ruin. His troops mutinied. Had it not been 
for the affection and respect with which he had 
inspired the officers, William would only have 
escaped from the hands of the Spaniards to 
perish under the violence of his own soldiers — 
enraged at not receiving their pay, and weary 
of the war. He was necessitated to disband 
them, and to abandon his besieged brother 
Lewis to his sad fate. It is at this moment 
that William wrote to John of Nassau : " I have 



William the Taciturn. 121 

determined, by the grace of God, to go and take 
up position in Holland and Zeeland, and to 
make there my grave." 

This heroic resolution is an index of the des- 
perate situation in which the Prince then found 
himself. Thrust anew into misfortune, after 
having been for a moment in sight of the port, 
he had now to deplore the assassination of 
Coligny, and of his friends in France, as well as 
his own reverses and the defection of many 
towns, grown disheartened at his unsuccesses. 
A single corner of the country remained faith- 
ful to him and had the courage to receive him. 
It is here that he awaited the approach of Alva 
or his lieutenants — here that the liberty of the 
Netherlands had still defenders. 

William might this time, as formerly, have 
retired to Germany and put himself out of reach 
of the conqueror. But he had no desire to do 
so. So long as his cause had the least corner 
of faithful territory in the Netherlands, he felt 
it his duty to defend it against Spanish tyranny. 
Like Civilis, the ancient Batavian chief, he re- 
tired into the marshes of Zeeland as his last 
asylum, where it was necessary either to con- 
quer or to perish. 



122 William the Taciturn. 

In view of this generous purpose he betook 
himself, therefore, to Holland. He was followed 
by only seventy men, the remnant of the twenty 
thousand soldiers with whom he had attempted 
to succor Mons — into which town the Spaniards 
entered as soon as he departed. With this 
simple escort he traversed the Zuyder Zee, and 
reached the patriotic soil where so many noble 
hearts called him. The Hollanders welcomed 
him as they might have welcomed a conqueror. 
They understood that he had now more than 
ever a right to their esteem and sympathy. 
Was he not in fact in some sense a victim of 
his own indomitable patriotism ? and in taking 
refuge among them, did he not give them a 
touching proof of his confidence in them and of 
his desire to share their lot ? 

The representatives of the Province assem- 
bled at Harlem at his request. He there ex- 
plained to them his plans for the future. His 
presence impressed upon their deliberations a 
serious impulse. All these men promised, in 
the name of their Province, to struggle to their 
last breath for religion and liberty. They felt 
that their cause, as being the cause of justice 
itself, could be abandoned only by the craven- 



William the Taciturn. 123 

hearted, and they took courage at the voice of 
their chief. 

William passed from town to town, inspiring 
with his own enthusiasm the magistrates and 
citizens as well as the deputies. He then took 
up his quarters in the south of the Province, 
while his lieutenant, Sonoy, held the north, 
Harlem was a central position, and served as a 
point of communication between the two parts 
of the Province. The Duke of Alva, already 
master of all Belgium, hoped that by capturing 
this city he would strike a final blow to the 
revolt, and easily destroy the forces of the pa- 
triots by preventing their re-organization. 



124 William the Taciturn. 



CHAPTER X. 

The Spaniards besiege Harlem — Courage of the Inhabitants, 
and efforts of Orange to succor them — Capture of the 
place — Sentiments of William — His exhortations to the 
citizens of Alkmaar — Resistance and triumph of this little 
town. 

A I ^HE sack of Naarden and the barbarous 
massacre* of its inhabitants formed, as it 
were, the prelude of the enterprise which the 
Spaniards contemplated, and the first stroke 
which they inflicted upon Holland. A few 
days after this act of horrible vandalism, the 
nth of December, they invested Harlem with 
an army of thirty thousand men. To oppose 

* Of the general cruelties inflicted under Alva's administra- 
tion Motley says : " Men, women, and children, old and 
young, nobles and paupers, opulent burghers, hospital pa- 
tients, lunatics, dead bodies, all were indiscriminately made 
to furnish food for the scaffold and the stake. Men were tor- 
tured, beheaded, hanged by the neck and by the legs, burned 
before slow fires, pinched to death with red-hot tongs, broken 
upon the wheel, starved, and flayed alive. Their skins, 
stripped from the living body, were stretched upon drums to 
be beaten in the march of their brethren to the gallows. The 
bodies of many who had died a natural death were exhumed, 
and their festering remains hanged upon the gibbet." 



William the Taciturn. 125 

against this enormous force the besieged had 
only a garrison of about two thousand soldiers, 
and a breast-work of partially dilapidated walls. 
But their patriotism was an invulnerable breast- 
work, each citizen being ready to give his life 
for the defense of the city. 

Even the women rushed to arms. They 
formed an organized body, to the number of 
three hundred, that yielded to none in intre- 
pidity ; and, while preserving the costume of 
their sex, they handled the sword and musket 
with an address and energy that would have 
done honor to men. They were commanded 
by a widow of a distinguished family and of a 
reputation without spot. 

William of Orange could not look on idly 
and see this heroic population fall under the 
number of their assailants ; he sent to them a 
reinforcement of three thousand men which he 
had collected in the neighboring town, Leyden, 
in view of the attack which had taken place. 
But these troops were cut to pieces and forced 
to retire. The conquerors then opened the 
siege with a vigorous cannonade which lasted 
three days. The inhabitants, rich and poor, old 
and young, men and women, vied with each 



126 William the Taciturn. 

other in zeal and promptness in repairing the 
breaches. 

The Spanish General stopped the firing and 
ordered an assault ; but this proved no more 
successful than the cannonading, and his troops 
recoiled before the storm of stones, of boiling 
oil, and of burning coals, which, like a volcano in 
eruption, the entire population hurled upon them. 

The Prince of Orange had, at this time, his 
head-quarters at Sassenheim, at the northern ex- 
tremity of the lake which separates Harlem 
from Amsterdam, the sole city of Holland held 
by the Duke of Alva. William made another 
attempt to throw reinforcements into the be- 
sieged place, but with no better success than 
the first. The two thousand men of whom it 
was composed in approaching the city became 
enveloped in the dense fogs produced by the 
lake, and lost their route. Before they could re- 
find it the Spaniards fell upon them and dis- 
persed them. 

Since the fruitless assault of the 21st of 
December, the lieutenant of Alva who directed 
the siege, namely, Don Frederic, had been 
busily engaged in approaching the city by 
digging subterranean passages ; but in propor^ 



William the Taciturn. 127 

tion as the Spaniards mined the besieged 
counter-mined, and deadly combats took place 
not unfrequently between the two parties in 
the bowels of the earth, attended sometimes 
with horrible explosions. 

William encouraged the inhabitants of. Har- 
lem in their resistance by promises of help, 
which he accomplished to the best of his ability. 
On the 28th of January he sent to them across 
the frozen lake a considerable provision of bread 
and powder, upon a hundred and seventy sleds, 
escorted by four hundred picked soldiers. 
Thanks to the solicitude of the Prince, the 
citizens were enabled to hold out against the 
enemy and repulse his attacks. They passed 
the long winter nights in constructing an inte- 
rior wall stronger than the old one, which was 
threatening ruin. Hence, when Don Frederic, 
after having made large breaches, commanded 
a fresh assault, in full confidence of victory, he 
was bitterly disappointed in meeting behind the 
old broken-down ramparts fresh fortifications, 
which opened their fires upon his army, and 
forced him to a second retreat. 

Despite the success, however, which crowned 
their efforts, the brave inhabitants of Harlem 



128 



William the Taciturn. 



saw their situation becoming more and more 
perilous, and their supplies diminish from day to 
day. The Spaniards, having given up all hope 
of conquering them, were now endeavoring 
to reduce them by famine. They confined 
their operations to holding them blockaded. 
Spring approached and favored their purposes. 

The Count Bossu, taking advantage of a 
thaw, succeeded in entering the lake with a 
Spanish squadron, and in thus cutting off the 
communications of the besieged with the Prince 
of Orange. But William had discovered a means 
of turning upon his enemies the danger thev 
were inflicting upon his friends. Amsterdam, 
the head-quarters of the Spaniards, received its 
supplies by an artificial road or dike ; he needed 
only to cut this dike in order to isolate it from 
the surrounding country, and thus visit upon it 
the famine from which Harlem itself was suffer- 
ing. Had this result been obtained, the Span- 
iards, deprived of their resources, would have 
been forced to raise the siege, and u to surren- 
der without striking a blow/'' as Alva himself 
confessed, " if thev did not wish to die them- 
selves of starvation." 

In order to realize this plan Orange had need 



William the Taciturn. 129 

of troops and money. He pressed his friends 
in England, in France, and in Germany to send 
him aid without delay. He wrote to his brother 
Lewis to bring him reinforcements as speedily 
as possible. " The entire country," said he to 
him, " long after you as if you were the Arch- 
angel Gabriel." In the meantime he collected 
some volunteers, and charged his lieutenant, 
Sonoy, to commence with them the work of 
opening the dikes, the rupture of which he 
hoped would deliver to him the enemy. 

This little army, before it was scarcely at 
work, was fallen upon by superior forces and 
repulsed, after having accomplished prodigies 
of valor. One of the soldiers here engaged, 
John Haring, distinguished himself in a manner 
fully equal to the classic heroes of Greece and 
Rome. This brave Hollander, left alone upon 
the dike, had held the Spaniards in check and 
given his comrades time to escape. Then, like 
Horatius Codes, of whose daring he reminds 
us, he plunged into the lake and succeeded in 
escaping, without having received a single ball 
or lance-stroke. 

In the meantime the citizens of Harlem let 
pass hardly a single day without making some 



130 William the Taciturn. 

daring sortie against the besiegers. They rushed 
upon their trenches, and pillaged and burned their 
tents. The Duke of Alva, who had grown old 
in battles, was astounded at such audacity and 
energy. He assured Philip II., that " never a 
place had been defended with so much bravery 
and ability as Harlem." The King immedi- 
ately forwarded reinforcements ; and, as soon 
as the Spanish fleet had received its apportion- 
ment, it proceeded to attack the vessels which 
the Prince of Orange had opposed to it in order 
to dispute the possession of the lake. This 
struggle was fatal to the patriots. Twenty-two 
ships were captured by the Spaniards, and the 
lake, as well as all the forts which defended it, 
fell into their power. From this moment on 
the situation of the besieged became intolerable. 
The provisions, being no longer renewed, were 
soon completely exhausted. Famine, as the 
enemy had foreseen, made terrible ravages in 
the city. The streets were encumbered with 
the sick and the dying. William made several 
renewed attempts to send them provisions, but 
his convoys were intercepted and seized. 

He made now a heroic resolution. He sent 
to the despairing citizens a letter by a carrier 



William the Taciturn. 131 

pigeon. He conjured them to hold out two 
days longer, inasmuch as he was making- ready 
to deliver them. He was then at Delft, in the 
southern part of Holland. He announced 
publicly his intention of marching himself to 
the succor of the besieged. He asked that, in 
default of regular troops, determined and patri- 
otic men should join him, and he named a 
governor or stadtholder who was to assume 
command of the province in case he should 
perish. Four thousand volunteers and six 
hundred horsemen offered themselves, well- 
armed and glad to follow him. But when he 
appeared to put himself at their head, the popu- 
lation of Delft could not persuade themselves 
to see him thus rush into an enterprise which 
was no less perilous than difficult. The soldiers 
themselves, trembling like the citizens for so 
precious a life, opposed his departure then also, 
and insisted that it was his duty not to risk a 
life so necessary to the rescue of Holland. He 
yielded with great regret to all these entreaties, 
and gave the command to one of his bravest 
lieutenants. ' . 

But this expedition, anticipated by the Span- 
iards, sadly failed. The patriots were crushed 



132 William the Taciturn. 

by an enemy greatly superior in number, and 
their leader perished in the action. 

On hearing of this the Prince of Orange saw 
that the fall of Harlem was inevitable, and, in 
his inability to get together soon enough other 
troops, and with an unutterably oppressed 
heart, he advised the citizens to capitulate on 
the best terms they could obtain. 

Under these terrible circumstances the inhab- 
itants resolved to form themselves into an armed 
body, and, with their wives and children in the 
middle, to attempt thus to start out from the 
city, and cut their way by the force of despair 
through the camp of the enemy, or to perish 
all together. 

Informed of this purpose, and fearing thus to 
lose the fruits of a victory which had cost him so 
dearly, Don* Frederic promised grace and 
amnesty if the city should yield without delay. 
This stratagem met with full success. The 
citizens of Harlem, counting upon the word of 
the Spaniards, laid down their arms and made 
their submission, on the 12th of July, 1573, 
after a siege of seven months. But the Span- 
iards had scarcely entered the place when they 
were infamous enough to massacre a population 



William the Taciturn. 133 

whose courage and sufferings ought to have 
touched the hearts of cannibals. The execu- 
tions continued during several days ; two thou- 
sand persons, among whom were the soldiers of 
the garrison, many citizens of the town, and 
the ministers of the Protestant worship, were 
immolated in cold blood. The executioners 
grew weary of their work : the victims which 
remained in the prisons were then bound to- 
gether two and two and thrown into Harlem 
lake. 

The Prince of Orange did not allow the 
triumph of the Spaniards to deprive him of 
hope. He wrote to the Count Lewis : " I had 
hoped to send you be'cter news ; but as it has 
pleased the good God otherwise, we must sub- 
mit to his divine will. I call this God to wit- 
ness that I have done, according to my means, 
all that was possible to relieve the city." 

A few days afterward his pious confidence 

was recompensed. The Zeelanders, excited to 

courage instead of terrified by the tragic end of 

Harlem, succeeded in seizing upon the Chateau 

of Rammekens, in the Isle of Walcheren, which 

formed the key to the Netherlands. " I hope," 

said William then, with a patriotic pride, "that 

9 



134 Whxiam the Taciturn. 

this will humble the pride of our enemies, 
who, since the surrender of Harlem, have be- 
lieved they were going to swallow us alive. I 
am assured, however, that they will find the 
work more difficult than they had expected." 

After the fall of Harlem the Duke of Alva 
turned his arms against the little town of AJk- 
maar, at the northern extremity of Holland, as 
the ]ast outpost of liberty. Orange dispatched 
thither troops, which anticipated by a few days 
the Spanish army. On the 21st of August the 
lieutenant of the Duke, his sword yet smoking 
from the blood of Harlem, appeared before the 
place with sixteen thousand veterans, and im- 
mediately invested it. The garrison amounted 
simply to eight hundred soldiers, supported by 
thirteen hundred citizens poorly prepared to 
bear arms. The Lieutenant-governor of William 
in North Holland, the experienced Sonoy, was 
constrained to write to the Prince, expressing 
the fear which he entertained for the fate of 
these brave people. " If your Serene Highness," 
wrote he, " has succeeded in making a treaty 
with any powerful potentate, it is now quite 
necessary to make it known to all the 
towns in order to put a stop to the emigra- 



William the Taciturn. 135 

tion of the people and console them in their 
affliction." 

William answered this desponding letter by 
words which breathed the most ardent patriot- 
ism and the profoundest faith. He had not ex- 
pected, said he, -to see the citizens of Xorth 
Holland despair of their holy cause and to fall 
so quickly into discouragement. He seriously 
remonstrated with them for making the destiny 
of the country depend on the fall of a single 
citv. He took God to witness that he had not 
been sparing of pains, and that he would have 
been ready to pour out his own blood to ward off 
this misfortune. " But since, in spite of our 
efforts," added he, " it has pleased God to dis- 
pose of Harlem according to his own will, shall 
we for that reason deny his holy word ? Is the 
mighty arm of the Lord shortened ? Is his 
Church destroyed ? You ask me whether I 
have concluded my treaty with Kings and great 
potentates ; I answer you that, before taking in 
hand the cause of the oppressed Christians in 
the Provinces, I had entered into a close alli- 
ance with the King of kings, and I am con- 
vinced that he will save by his mighty arm 
those- who put their confidence in him. The 



136 William the Taciturn. 

God of armies will raise up armies, and enable 
us to contend against his enemies and ours." 
He rehearsed, in concluding, his preparations 
for continuing the war, and conjured his lieuten- 
ant and his other friends to stand steadfast in 
the face of the enemy. 

These manly counsels were, for the little gar- 
rison and the citizens of Alkmaar, a source of 
strength and hope. They made up their mind 
to suffer every thing rather than to surrender. 
They repulsed the assaults and fought with so 
much obstinacy and courage that the Spaniards, 
astonished at being defeated by a handful of 
" persons without helmet or cuirass, and dressed 
like fishermen," imagined that the Evil Spirit 
was protecting the place, and were unwilling 
longer to expose themselves in the breach. 

Don Frederic was endeavoring to dissipate 
the superstitious terror of his soldiers, until 
then invincible, when some dispatches from the 
Prince of Orange, contained in a hollow cane, 
but lost by the messenger who carried them, 
fell into his hands. In these dispatches Will- 
iam ordered Sonoy, his lieutenant, to open the 
dikes near Alkmaar, and to send thereby the 
sea to the help of the besieged. But Sonoy 



William the Taciturn. 137 

had already gone at this work ; already the 
waters were advancing to swallow up the vet- 
erans of Alva ; at the sight of the inundation 
the Spanish General thought that neither honor 
nor duty required that he should perish with 
his army in a hopeless struggle against the sea. 
On the 8th of October he raised the siege and 
rejoined his father at Amsterdam. After six 
years of experience the Duke of Alva was 
forced to admit that these Hollanders, these 
" men of butter," as he contemptuously called 
them, were even more difficult to crush than 
the men of iron whom he had elsewhere con- 
quered. Sixteen thousand of his best soldiers 
and the most skillful of his generals had been 
obliged to flee before two thousand men, poorly 
armed and drilled, combating upon a narrow 
stretch of sand-bank for their God and their 
firesides. 



138 William the Taciturn. 



CHAPTER XI. 



Negotiations of William with France — New Address to the 
States- General of the Netherlands — Naval victory of the 
patriots — The Prince of Orange communes for the first time 
in a Reformed Church — Policy of the successor of Alva — 
Military plan of William — Defeat and death of his brother 
Lewis — Letter of his mother. 



* » counsel as well as in action, did not 
cease to negotiate and to correspond, in view to 
obtain help for his cause. His brother Lewis 
had renewed relations with the French Govern- 
ment, which, always contravened in its ambition 
by Spain, was endeavoring to palliate the mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew, and seeking the alli- 
ance of Protestants abroad, the natural enemies - 
of its dreaded rival. The Prince, while direct- 
ing at the same time this negotiation and the 
defense of Alkmaar, busied himself also in mul- 
tiplying his partisans in the Provinces as well as 
abroad. He improved the occasion of the meet- 
ing of the States-General of the Netherlands, 
whom Alva had convoked at Brussels, to send 




ORANGE, unwearied in 



William the Taciturn. 139 

to them in his own name and in that of the 
province of Holland an address, in order to 
convince them of the necessity of uniting them- 
selves in a general effort against the tyranny 
which weighed against their common country. 

The Prince made allusion to the ancient 
affection which bound to each other the differ- 
ent Provinces. He spoke of the Inquisition, 
which was in danger of being founded forever 
upon the ruins of their national institutions, if 
all Netherlander should not unite to overthrow 
it. He demanded of the people, as represented 
by their deputies, how they could submit to the 
cruelties and extortions of Alva ? Neither the 
Princes of Flanders, of Burgundy, of Brabant, 
nor of Holland — in fact, none of the ancient 
sovereigns of the country — had ever made war 
or peace, coined money or assessed imposts, 
without the consent of the States-General. How, 
then, could the nation consent to taxes which 
were growing more grievous from day to day ? 
If Amsterdam and Middelburg had remained 
faithful — if these two important cities had not 
abandoned the cause of freedom— the Provinces 
of the North would have been invincible. " It 
is by the Netherlands," said he, " that the 



140 William the Taciturn. 

Netherlands are crushed. Whence does the 
Duke of Alva derive the power of which he 
boasts, if it is not from the towns of the Nether- 
lands ? Whence does he derive his vessels, his 
# supplies, his money, his arms, his soldiers, if it 
is not from the people of the Netherlands ? 
Why are the Netherlands thus degenerated ? 
What has become of the noble spirit of our 
ancestors who did not tolerate the tyranny of 
foreign nations, who did not even permit a 
stranger to exercise among us any public func- 
tion whatever ? If the little Province of Hol- 
land can hold in check the might of Spain, 
what could not accomplish the entire Nether- 
lands — Brabant, Flanders, Friesland, and all the 
rest of the nation ? " Finally, the Prince sup- 
plicated the States-General to extend a helping 
hand to Holland, and to march with her, as 
brothers, to restore to the country its independ- 
ence and its ancient prosperity. 
. The triumph of the cirizens of Alkmaar fol- 
lowed close upon this proclamation, and aug- 
mented the effect which it produced. Another 
success at sea contributed to awaken the sub- 
jected Provinces to the power they would have 
if they would realize the union which William 



William the Taciturn. 141 

recommended to them. After a desperate con- 
flict the patriots ruined the Spanish fleet and 
made prisoner their Admiral, Bossu, who was 
also royalist Governor of Holland, and one of 
the most important champions of Philip in the 
Netherlands. This capture saved the life of 
one of the most useful and most faithful friends 
of the Taciturn, the eloquent Aldegonde, who 
had been captured by the Spaniards while 
•attempting to revictual a fortress near Rotter- 
dam. The Prince hastened to inform Alva 
that he should treat Admiral Bossu just as Sainte 
Aldegonde should be treated. The sentence 
of death which had been pronounced upon the 
latter was held in suspense, and a year later 
the two captives recovered their liberty. 

A few days after the naval victory of his 
party, that is, on the 23d of October, 1573, 
William of Orange partook for the first time 
of the Lord's Supper, according to the Protestant 
rite, in a Calvinistic church at Delft, his usual 
residence since his return to Holland. It was 
in this month, five years previously, that he had 
taken his position against the Duke of Alva, 
and commenced the long and heroic struggle 
which, though attended by so many sad vicissi- 



142 William the Taciturn. 



tudes, .seemed finally to be about to reward his 
perseverance. Hence the recollection of his 
past misfortunes co-operated with the sentiments 
called forth by his recent victories to prepare 
and dispose his heart for this solemn rite, in 
which the Christian confesses afresh his faith 
in the holy victims who has opened heaven 
for him by his sufferings upon the cross. He 
had delayed for five years since his conversion 
before participating in the enjoyment of this 
sacred privilege, which he regarded as belong- 
ing only to the true disciples of the Saviour, 
and which becomes the pledge of their union 
with him. 

On the 1 8th of December the Duke of Alva 
took his final leave of the Provinces, leaving 
behind him enormous debts and a name steeped 
in crime.* He went away to die in Spain, in 

*The cruelties of Alva were not without encouragement 
from high quarters. At the moment when he was at the 
height of his bloody career a " special messenger arrived from 
the Pope, bringing as a present to Alva a jeweled hat and 
sword. It was a gift rarely conferred by the Church, and 
never save upon the highest dignitaries, or upon those who 
had merited her most signal rewards by the most shining 
exploits in her defense. The Duke was requested, in the 
autograph letter from His Holiness which accompanied the 
presents, ' to remember when he put the hat upon his head 
that he was guarded with it as a helmet of righteousness and 



William the Taciturn. 143 

the disfavor of his royal master. He ended his 
days with a lingering sickness which forced 
him to feed himself on milk like an infant. 

The successor of this heartless tyrant was 
former Governor of Milan, Requesens, Grand 
Commander of Castile. He found himself con- 
fronted, on arriving, with a treasury in debt, 
left by Alva, and patriots elated by victory. 
He saw at once that it would be policy to begin 
his work with conciliatory pretenses. He abol- 
ished the Council of Blood, and endeavored to 
gain time by deceiving the people with the 
hope of a general amnesty. 

All parties desired peace. The chief men of 
the royalist grandees wrote to William of Orange 
on several occasions, ottering to him their inter- 
vention in obtaining his reconciliation with the 
King, and conjuring him to discontinue a war 
of which the whole country was weary. The 
Prince responded, not without a little touch of 
irony, that he was glad that their eyes were 
finally opened to the iniquities of which the 

with the shield of God's help, indicating the heavenly crown 
which was ready for all princes who supported the Holy 
Church and the Roman Catholic faith.' The motto on the 
sword ran as follows : Accipe sanctum gladium. munus a Deo 
in quo dejicies adversaries populi Tnei Israel. " — Motley, 



144 William the Taciturn. 

Netherlands had so long been a victim, and that 
he accepted their offers of kindness with the 
same frankness which had dictated them. This 
correspondence resulted in nothing. 

The war continued on both sides. The patriots 
laid siege to Middelburg, while the Spaniards 
had been engaged in blockading Leyden since 
the affair at Alkmaar. Requesens hastened 
to forward reinforcements to the former of 
these towns, the sole place on the isle of Wal- 
cheren which still held out for Philip II. He fitted 
out two flotillas, which were intended, setting 
out from two different points, to effect a junc- 
tion, and in concert revictual Middelburg. But 
William of Orange had taken his measures for 
defeating this plan. He had already collected 
considerable forces ; these he confided to an 
experienced mariner, the Admiral Boisot. He 
stationed his fleet a short distance from the port 
of Bergen, from which was destined to set out 
the more numerous of the hostile squadrons. 

On the 20th of January, 1574, he visited his 
troops, and filled them with enthusiasm by 
showing them the* necessity of hindering the 
Spaniards from snatching Middelburg from the 
hands of the patriots, now that they had it just 



William the Taciturn. 145 

within their grasp, and were thus about to pos- 
sess themselves of the key to Zeeland. He 
had scarcely returned to Delft when he heard 
the news of the victory of his fleet under Boisot. 
The Spanish squadron, after having lost fifteen 
vessels and twelve hundred men, withdrew again 
to Bergen, abandoning Middelburg to its fate. 
This town, in prey to all the horrors of famine, 
was forced, despite the valor of its garrison, to 
surrender a month subsequently. The Prince 
thereupon entered the place, appointed new 
magistrates, received the oaths of the citizens, 
re-established the ancient constitution, and, in 
great contrast to the perfidy and cruelty of 
the Spaniards, generously remitted to the citi- 
zens two thirds of the sum which they had obli- 
gated themselves to pay. 

The capture of Middelburg left the patriots in 
possession of the entire island of Walcheren 
and of the coast of the Netherlands. But this 
advantage was diminished by the presence of 
the enemy upon the Holland territory. Leyden 
was invested, the country was in a sad condi- 
tion, and communication between the chief 
towns of the province could not take place. 
William felt keenly the gravity of the situation. 



146 William the Taciturn. 

At his instance the Count Lewis had under- 
taken to raise an army in Germany in order to 
relieve Leyden, and to follow up on land the 
successes obtained at sea. He had drawn up a 
plan of campaign, of which the details are con- 
tained in his voluminous correspondence. As 
soon as he should have collected sufficient forces 
Lewis was to attack Maestricht, which would 
serve them for a basis of operation in Brabant. 
•Should the attempt fail, he was to pass the 
Meuse at another point and to effect a junction 
with his brother in the neighborhood of Delft. 
They were then to take up position together 
between Harlem and Leyden, and thus force 
the Spaniards to give battle under' great disad- 
vantages or to quit the province, " In a word," 
said the Prince, " should this enterprise be con- 
ducted diligently, discreetly, and prudently, I 
regard it certainly as the only means of prompt- 
ly finishing the war and chasing away these 
fiendish Spaniards before the Duke of Alva 
can be ready to raise a new army to come to 
their relief." 

Obedient to these instructions, Lewis, after 
having labored during the first part of the win- 
ter to provide himself with soldiers and money, 



William the Taciturn. 147 

was ready to march at the signal of William. 
Hence, at the close of February, he came and 
encamped with nine thousand men in the neigh- 
borhood of Maestricht, on the shore of the Meuse. 
William had appointed a place where they 
should meet, and had there brought together 
six thousand infantry. As soon as Lewis 
should have taken Maestricht he was to march 
into Holland. At the- news of his approach, 
however, Requesens doubled the garrison of 
Maestricht and collected troops from every 
quarter : he even recalled those which were 
besieging Leyden, convinced that with all his 
troops he would not have more than would be 
needed for arresting the progress of his adver- 
saries, and defeating a plan the success of which 
might prove his ruin. Retarded by the ice in 
the Meuse, Lewis was forced to give to the 
Spaniards time not only to throw reinforcements 
into Maestricht, but also to assume the offen- 
sive and to bar against him the passage of the 
river. On the 13th of April, after having 
changed position several times and quit the 
neighborhood of Maestricht, he arrived at the 
village of Mook, some distance to the north, with 
the intention of finally crossing the river in 



148 William the Taciturn. 

order to effect his junction with William. But 
he here found his enemy confronting him in a 
favorable position and burning to join battle, 
while his own troops were mutinying and clam- 
oring for their pay before battle. In spite of 
these difficulties, Lewis was not the man to 
retreat. On the next day the two armies 
engaged in battle. But at the very first shock 
the mercenary and cowardly bands of the brave 
Lewis broke ranks in confusion. Their chief 
seeing himself defeated, rallied around himself 
a squad of horsemen, among whom was his 
brother Henry, and undertook to cut his way 
through the Spanish army. They dashed into 
this daring enterprise, and were never seen 
again. Many conjectures have been made as 
to their precise fate ; it is only possible, how- 
ever, to conclude that the Count Lewis and 
his heroic escort perished, arms in their hands, 
and that, despoiled of their clothes, and mangled 
under the feet of horses, their bodies were 
buried with the heaps of the dead which 
crowded the bloody field of Mook, without 
being recognized. 

The grief of William on learning of the mas- 
sacre of his brothers was almost beyond sup- 



William the Taciturn. 149 



porting. The knightly Lewis * especially he 
loved with a partiality which was well merited 
by the services he had received from him, and 
the hopes he based on his unwearied devotion 
and his military talent. For the first time, 
William fell into a deep despondency. But his 
holy and courageous mother, rising even above 
her own affliction, hastened to console him, 
reminding him of the Master whom he served, 
and of the work which yet remained for him to 
accomplish. Her language, austere as duty 
itself, reminds one involuntarily of that mount- 
ain of Judea, where the patriarch Abraham 
made ready to sacrifice his own and only son in 
obedience to the order of God. One finds in 
Julia of Nassau no unworthy counterpart to the 
absolute confidence and unshaken resignation 
of the father of the faithful, associated with the 

* " All who knew Lewis personally loved him, and he was the 
idol of his gallant brethren. His mother always addressed him 
as her dearly-beloved, her heart's-cherished Lewis. ... It 
was the doom of this high-born, true-hearted dame to be called 
upon to weep oftener for her children than is the usual lot of 
mothers. Count Adolphus had already perished in his youth 
on the field of Heiliger Lee, and now Lewis and his young 
brother Henry, who had scarcely attained his twenty-sixth 
year, . . . had both found a bloody and an unknown grave."— 
Motley. 

10 



150 William the Taciturn. 

most touching tenderness. " When you are 
not happy/ 5 wrote she to the Prince, " I suffer 
in the very depths of my soul. It is very natu- 
ral to believe, as you have written to me, that, 
humanly speaking, it will be difficult for you, 
deprived of all resources, to hold out long against 
such great odds. But forget not, I pray you, 
that thus far the Almighty has brought you out 
of your greatest dangers. He will never refuse 
you his succor if you place in him your hope 
and your confidence. On the contrary, he will 
come and deliver you by his marvelous power ; 
for the Lord is the Almighty — all things are 
possible to him, and nothing can happen with- 
out his permission. For this reason, I pray this 
merciful God that he may give you the grace 
not to lose courage in the midst of your numer- 
ous trials, but rather to await patiently his help, 
undertaking nothing contrary to his word and 
commandments, and which should compromise 
the peace of your soul.' 5 . . . The conclusion 
of the letter is highly worthy of a mother : 
" You cannot believe how glad and happy I am 
to see any thing written by your hand, for you 
are the object of my incessant solicitude. I 
pray the Almighty to attend you with his bene- 



William the Taciturn. 151 

diction and his grace. Wherever I shall be 
able to testify to you my devotion, in doing you 
any service, I assure you I will not spare my- 
sel£ God knows it — and to him I ever commit 
the care of your person." 



152 



William the Taciturn. 



CHAPTER XII. 



Siege of Leyden — Plans of the Prince of Orange for relieving 
the place — Heroic defense of the population — Sickness and 
self-sacrifice of William — Delays of the patriotic fleet — 
Troubles in the city and courage of the Burgomaster — 
Retreat of the Spaniards and entrance of Admiral Boisot 
into Leyden — Visit of the Prince and foundation of the 
University. 



HE Prince regained his courage and all 



his wonted energy on seeing the Span- 
iards, after their victory over Lewis of Nassau, 
renew the siege of Leyden after a brief inter- 
ruption. By a culpable negligence, the citizens 
of this rich and manufacturing city had not 
taken advantage of the two months of respite 
which their enemy had been forced to give 
them, but, counting on the certain success of 
Lewis, had neglected to provide themselves 
with either soldiers or supplies. William, instead 
of indulging in useless reproaches for this, 
addressed to them words of sympathy and 
encouragement " Remember," said he in sub- 
stance, " that you are about to combat not only 




William the Taciturn, 153 

for your own city, but for the country itself. 
The fate of our native land and of our descend- 
ants depends on the result of the struggle which 
you have now to sustain. May your courage 
justify the opinion entertained by the world of 
our valiant race ; show yourselves worthy of the 
sacred cause which you serve. I am seeking 
the means of coming to your relief. Hold out 
firmly for three months, and your deliverance is 
certain ; but if you should yield, nothing but 
eternal servitude awaits you." 

The response of the people of Leyden breathes 
the same noble sentiments expressed by the 
Prince : " We have here resolved not to quit the 
defense of the word of God and of our liberties 
so long as a man remains alive." 

The enemy lavished in vain the most seduc- 
tive flatteries and promises in view to obtain 
entrance into the place. To all their advances 
the besieged answered in this laconic Latin 
verse, expressive of the contempt they felt for 
the treacherous cunning of the Spaniard : 

"Fistula dulce canit, volucrem dum decipit anceps." * 

The defense of the city was committed to 

* It is by the sweet notes of the flute that the fowler lures 
his victim. 



154 William the Taciturn. 

John van der Does, a gentleman of a distin- 
guished family, and of high repute for both valor 
and learning. The garrison was very feeble, 
composed mostly of citizens. And yet the 
sorties were so frequent that the commander 
was obliged to forbid them, in order not thereby, 
little by little, to lose all his soldiers. 

William of Orange had established Jiis head- 
quarters at Delft and Rotterdam, from which 
points he directed all the operations of the 
siege, and awaited the favorable moment for 
striking some decided blow. Instructed by ex- 
perience, he had renounced the purpose of con- 
tending on shore with the Spanish forces, and 
looked for relief in the providential forces of 
the ocean. Holding control of the dikes of the 
Meuse and the Yssel, which the Spaniards had 
made a vain attempt to seize on the 29th of 
June, he needed only to cut them in order in 
his turn to cause the ocean to besiege the 
besiegers, and thus repeat the triumph of Alk- 
maar. Convinced finally that there was no 
other means of saving Leyden, and all Holland 
with it, he asked the assembled Deputies the 
permission of employing it. - It was to ask of 
them the loss of their crops, the sacrifice of 



William the Taciturn. 155 

their property — a voluntary ruin. But the 
Taciturn triumphed by his reason and his elo- 
quence over all the arguments opposed to him. 
" Better drown our country than lose it!" ex- 
claimed the Deputies ; and the inundation was 
resolved upon. 

On the 3d of August the Prince, accompa- 
nied by Paul Buys, one of his best and oldest 
friends, repaired in person to the banks of Yssel 
to superintend the opening of the dikes. While 
the waves were beginning to invade the coun- 
try, the people, in obedience to his orders, busied 
themselves in getting in supplies, and his troops 
organized flotillas in the neighboring ports. 

These measures of precaution were only too 
necessary. The besieged were lacking in bread, 
and had been feeding for a month upon malt 
cakes. Pretty soon there remained even of this 
coarse and unhealthy food only enough for four 
days. On the 21st of August the inhabitants 
wrote to the Prince that if they did not receive 
aid they were condemned either to surrender 
or die of starvation. He replied on the same 
day that all the dikes had been cut, and that 
the sea was steadily approaching their ramparts. 
This news rekindled their courage and their 



156 William the Taciturn. 

hopes. Every day and hour they mounted to 
the top of an ancient tower, from which they 
could command a wide prospect, and gazed with 
longing eyes for signs of the approaches' of the 
ocean upon the surface of their country ; but the 
waves, in the absence of a favorable wind, 
seemed immovable in their bed, and contra- 
dicted by their inertia the assurances given by 
the Taciturn. 

Replunged thereby into the greatest distress, 
and not knowing to what cause to attribute the 
succor for which they had so long been praying 
and watching, the citizens commenced to imag- 
ine themselves the dupes of their own confi- 
dence, and to despair of God and man. They 
addressed to the Deputies of the Province bitter 
complaints of the abandonment in which they 
were left. The Deputies of Holland dispatched 
to them immediately an encouraging reply, in 
which they protested their devotion to them, and 
announced that every thing possible was being 
done for their relief. "Rather," said they, 
"would we see perish in the waves our whole 
country and all our possessions, than relax our 
efforts for thee, O Leyden !•" They besought 
their besieged brethren to confide, as they them- 



William the Taciturn. 157 

selves were doing, in the wisdom and devotion 
of the Prince of Orange, who had charge of the 
measures looking to their deliverance. 

Meantime, William, suffering from an intense 
fever, was confined at Rotterdam to his bed. 
His physicians had prescribed for him absolute 
repose, convinced that his malady arose from 
his incessant anxieties and fatigues. But the 
Prince was not able to withdraw his thoughts 
from the great cause to which he had devoted 
his life. The image of Leyden was constantly 
floating before his eyes, and, rising above his 
sufferings, and thinking only of the distress of 
this unhappy city, and of the destiny of his 
country, seemingly on the point of perishing 
with it, he continued to direct the preparations 
for relief, dictating from his bed, through his 
secretary, suggestions for the besieged, instruc- 
tions for the disposition of his fleet, and encour- 
agements for all. 

Early in September his fever diminished, and 
the Prince began to convalesce. On the 8th 
he wrote with' his own hand to his brother John, 
who resided at Dillemburg on the family estate, 
with his " dearly-beloved mother," communi- 
cating to them the news of his bettering condi- 



1 5 S William the Taciturn. 

tion. His letter, as usual, manifests his humble 
and tranquil confidence in the divine will. " I 
commit every" thing," said he, " into the hands 
of God ; he knows what is best for me ; I am 
confident that he will dispose events for my 
highest good and my salvation, and will not 
visit upon me more affliction than the weakness 
and fragility of my nature are able to bear." 

The improvement of the health of the Prince 
was the signal for the setting out of his fleet. 
On the nth of September, in the morning, the 
inhabitants of Leyden saw approach within a 
mile of their walls, in front of the great dike 
which protected the walls against the sea, a 
large number of vessels, manned by persons the 
strange costume of whom designated them as 
the first soldiers of Holland independence ; it 
was the " gneux of the sea." They bore upon 
their caps a silver medal in the form of a cres- 
ent with this device : " Rather Turks than 
Papists." 

These rude mariners justified by their fero- 
cious and wound-covered visages their repu- 
tation for courage and ferocity. They had 
surprised and chased away, in the night, 
the Spaniards who guarded the first barrier, 



William the Taciturn. 159 

and they had crossed the second in like man- 
ner. But suddenly an unexpected obstacle pre- 
sented itself and arrested their progress. A 
wind set in from the east, and the sea fell to 
such an extent that the fleet became grounded 
upon the sand. 

The brave Admiral Boisot, after useless 
efforts to overcome the difficulty, had given up 
the expedition as a failure, and Leyden as lost, 
when the wind suddenly changed on the 18th, 
and the waters advanced again, so that the 
patriots triumphantly crossed the third dike, 
and thus gradually approached nearer to the 
city. But just as they were on the jpoint of 
arriving they were thwarted a second time by 
the east wind, and forced to cast anchor in the 
midst of the floods, which were now falling 
instead of rising. Time was being lost, and the 
soldiers were in a fury of impatience. William, 
scarcely recovered from his severe sickness, 
was at this moment at Delft. Regardless of 
the precautions required by the state of his 
health, he went on board the fleet. His visit 
was hailed with transports of joy. His words 
restored confidence and calm in the troubled 
hearts. These lawless men became, under his 



160 William the Taciturn. 

voice, as gentle and docile as lambs. Then, 
after a long interview with the Admiral, he re- 
turned to Delft. 

Meantime the city was a prey to all the hor- 
rors of famine. The inhabitants were forced to 
seek as food all manner of offal such as they could 
pick up in gutters and alleys, and even to devour 
the leaves of the trees and the grass of the 
streets. And a form of pestilence sprang up 
from these unhealthy habits, and carried away 
in a few days eight thousand persons. In this 
distressful situation the majority of the people 
exhibited a sublime patience and courage. They 
preferred to suffer the most terrible scourges 
rather than yield. One day, however, murmurs 
broke out. 

Some despairing and famished citizens as- 
sailed with reproaches and menaces the Burgo- 
master, Adrien van der Werf, at the moment 
when he was passing in the street. They accused 
him of haughtily and stubbornly rejecting an 
honorable capitulation, and of thus causing an 
entire population to perish in atrocious suffer- 
ings. The magistrate kept his peace and con- 
tinued his walk. Arriving at the center of the 
city, on a large public square in front of the 



William the Taciturn. 161 

portals of an ancient church, he halted, and, sur- 
veying the vast crowd that raged about him, he 
took off his hat and made a gesture indicating 
that he wished to address them.* His grave 
and pallid visage, his firm and composed look, 
soon imposed silence and respect upon even 
the most enraged. "What do you desire of 

me, my friends ? " said he then. " Why do you 
murmur because we do not violate our oath by 
surrendering the city to the Spaniards, a fate 
more horrible than even the agony which we 
are now suffering ? I have sworn to hold the 
place, and, by the help of God, I hope to make 
good my oath. My own fate concerns me very 
little ; but it is not so as to the city which has 
been intrusted to me. I know we shall die of 
famine if we are not very soon delivered ; but 
death from famine is far preferable to the shame- 
ful death which our enemies are reserving for 
us. Your menaces do not trouble me in the 
least ; my life is at your disposal. Here is my 
sword, you may take it and plunge it into my 
heart, and divide my flesh among you. Take 
my body and appease with it your hunger, but 

* See Frontispiece, 



1 62 William the Taciturn. 

do not look for the surrender of Leyden so long 
as I have life in me." 

This harangue wrought a magic effect upon 
the assembled multitude. They withdrew in 
peace, and promised their heroic magistrate to 
resist with him till the last man was dead. 
Thereupon they mounted upon the ramparts 
and hurled at their enemies words of defiance. 
" You say," cried they to them, " that we are 
devourers of rats and dogs. You are right ; so 
long as there are any dogs to bark in the city, or 
even cats, be assured that we shall not surren- 
der. And when there shall remain to us noth- 
ing but our own bodies, we will even then devour 
our left arm, and still defend, with our right, 
our wives, our liberty, and our religion, against 
the foreign tyrant. If God in his wrath has 
doomed us to destruction, and refuses us all 
succor, even then you shall not enter into our 
city. When our last hour shall have come, we 
will, with our own hands, set. fire to our city of 
Leyden, and we will perish in the flames, men, 
women, and children, all together, rather than 
survive to see our homes profaned and our liber- 
ties destroyed." 

Finally, on the night of the 1st of October, 



William the Taciturn. 163 

the wind changed to the south-west, and blew 
a violent gale. Floated by the waters, which 
rose with fury, and rushed through the dikes 
upon the country, the fleet now resumed its 
course. The Zeeland sailors, armed with poin- 
ards and hooks, opened a bloody channel for it 
through the fortresses of the enemy. 

A terrible conflict was engaged in, under the 
shadows of the fogs and night, in the midst of 
submerged orchards and villages. The Span- 
iards, baffled by this amphibious sort of war, 
imagined themselves assaulted by monsters of 
the deep, and, filled with terror, soon abandoned 
all their positions, after having lost more than 
a thousand men. 

On the 3d of October, 1 574, about nine o'clock 
in the morning, Admiral Boisot entered into 
Leyden with his two hundred vessels loaded 
with provisions. The most heart-rending spec- 
tacle now presented itself to his eyes, and dark- 
ened the joy of his success. Men and women, 
reduced to skeletons by hunger, and with face.s 
as frightful as ghosts, crowded up the quays to 
welcome their liberators, and demanded food 

with fearful cries. The sailors, touched with 

• 

pity, hastened to satisfy them, and cast out to 



164 William the Taciturn. 

them from the ships food without stint. The 
wretched people devoured it in such greediness 
that some of them died on the spot. 

Immediately after the disembarkation the 
Burgomaster and citizens, sailors and soldiers, 
women and children, formed a procession, and 
in one outburst of pious gratitude, proceeded, 
the Admiral at their head, to the great cathe- 
dral of the city to offer thanks to God for their 
victory. There, after prayer had been offered, 
the immense assembly commenced to chant a 
hymn of thanksgiving. But a profound emo- 
tion seized upon all and choked their utterance, 
forcing them to cease to sing and to give free 
expression to their hearts in silent tears. 

Thereupon they dispatched a courier to Delft 
to inform the Prince of Orange of the raise of 
the siege. He was at this moment listening to 
a sermon in one of the churches of the city. 
He sent the message forward to the officiating 
pastor, who immediately read it aloud. The 
whole congregation joined in with the happiness 
of the Prince, and the service was changed to 
an expression of thanksgiving. 

On the next day, despite the urgencies of his 
friends, who besought him not to expose his as 



William the Taciturn. 165 

yet feeble health to the air of a city where the 
pestilence had just been making so many rav- 
ages, William did not hesitate to repair to Ley- 
den in order to restore the courage of the citi- 
zens and to reduce to order the chaotic state 
of things. " We have the consoling confidence/' 
wrote he to his brother, " that the Almighty, 
as he has done thus far, will still preserve us by 
his grace and guard us against this danger." To 
recompense the population for their heroic de- 
fense, and to perpetuate its memory, he granted 
to the city a University. This institution was 
inaugurated, by a brilliant festival, the fifth of 
February, 1575. A grand political and relig- 
ious idea presided, as has been justly said, at 
its foundation. It was not merely necessary to 
establish by arms a material independence of the 
United Provinces, it was necessary also to create 
a moral nationality. The University of Leyden 
was intended to counterbalance the influence of 
the Catholic University of Louvain, by giving a 
nucleus to the intellectual movement of the Bata- 
vian reformation. The professors were all chosen 
from among men who were fully in sympathy 
with the views of the Taciturn, and were among 

the most celebrated scholars and pious men of 

11 



1 66 William the Taciturn. 

the Netherlands. John van der Does, who had 
ably commanded the troops in the defense of 
the city against the Spaniards, was appointed 
the first curator, or rector, of this Protestant 
University. 

The very day of his arrival at Leyden William 
had the joy of seeing the sea, as if it had been 
under the guidance of an invisible hand, begin 
to withdraw itself, after having accomplished its 
work. The citizens set themselves at once at 
work at reconstructing the dikes. 



William the Taciturn. 



167 



CHAPTER XIII. 



Requesens proposes peace — Firmness of the Prince of Orange 
— Union of Holland and Zeeland under his authority — His 
marriage with Charlotte of Bourbon — Success of the Span- 
iards — Rejection of the authority of Philip by the Deputies 
of Holland and Zeeland — Fruitless negotiations with En- 
gland — Death of Requesens — Pacification of Ghent. 



HE Spanish Government, though still 



continuing the war, continued its tempt- 
ing negotiations with the Prince of Orange to 
induce him to conclude peace. William still 
refused to treat on any other conditions than 
those of the withdrawal of the foreign troops, of 
the convocation of the States-General, and of 
the free exercise of the Protestant worship. 
When the agents of Requesens reminded him, 
doubtless to intimidate him, of his many reverses 
and of the immense resources of their sovereign, 
the Taciturn replied : " Misfortune concerns me 
little ; I have lived sufficiently long ; if I fall in 
the struggle, I shall have at least the satisfac- 
tion of having done all that was in my power to 
bring a remedy to the disorders and oppression 




1 68 William the Taciturn. 



which dominate in my country." I know that 
his Majesty is very powerful, but there is a 
Monarch more terrible, still, God the Creator, 
and I hope to have him on my side/' This bold 
answer was, so to speak, the concluding word 
of the negotiations. ' They ended without any 
result, after having lasted the entire summer 
and autumn of 1574. 

The same year was marked by changes in 
the administration of the revolted Provinces. 
William manifested toward his opponents at 
home the same frankness and the same firmness 
as toward the Spanish commissioners. The 
liberality which the Provinces had manifested at 
the outset of the struggle had been gradually 
diminishing, and a spirit of jealousy and embar- 
rassing interference showed itself in the councils 
of most of the towns. The powers of the 
Prince, as conferred in a moment of enthusiasm, 
were poorly defined, and gave occasion to annoy- 
ing interpretations. The Taciturn complained 
to the Deputies of Holland of this situation of 
things, and declared to them that he was ready 
to give up the government entirely into their 
hands rather than be the object of unjust dis- 
trust, or an occasion of contentions among the 



William the Taciturn. 169 
defenders of the country. These words brought 

J o 

back the Deputies to more just sentiments, and 
made them blush for their ingratitude. In a 
session held at Delft in the course of November 
they petitioned him to continue " his good gov- 
ernment;" and accorded to him for the expenses 
of the war and other general outlays the sum 
which he asked. 

After having obtained all the guarantees that 
he desired, the Prince, more powerful and more 
respected than ever, resumed the reins of power. 
And he did more : he had suffered enough from 
the obstacles raised against him by the narrow 
jealousy and the pretensions of the municipal 
boards of the towns to feel the need of apply- 
ing a remedy. He could not make war with- 
out being sure of uniting under his control all 
the forces of Holland and Zeeland in occasions 
of necessity. Hence the separation of these 
two Provinces was an evil and a danger. As 
they were defending the same cause under the 
same flag, it was natural that they should have 
the same form of government, and that they 
should present to the enemy a single body under 
a single chief. 

In the month of April, 1575, commissioners 



170 William the Taciturn. 

were appointed to digest a plan of union, and 
on the fourth of June this union was solemnly 
proclaimed by the States-General. 

William received an equal authority over the 
two united Provinces. He had the absolute 
command of the army, and was charged with 
regulating its expenses, for which the Deputies 
were to provide by their votes. It was his duty 
to see that the laws were executed, to choose 
and renew the "municipal officers in times of 
peace, and to protect the Reformed worship 
and suppress the Roman Catholic religion, with- 
out, however, permitting any one to disturb his 
neighbors for their religious belief. This inter- 
diction of the ancient worship appears as but a 
very peaceful retaliation when compared with 
the cruelties of the Inquisition against the Ref- 
ormation. It is, nevertheless, a violation of 
the liberty of conscience, and in contradiction 
to the principles in the name of which the 
Batavian patriots had raised the standard of 
revolt. We must not forget, however, that 
toleration was, in the sixteenth century, only 
the dream of a few generous hearts or elevated 
souls such as William of* Orange, while intoler- 
ance was the fault or error of the great majority, 



William the Taciturn. 171 

and, properly speaking, an application of the 
right of lawful self-defense. Infant Protestant- 
ism borrowed from Catholicism its own arms, 
in order to prevent itself from being strangled 
at its birth. " If the new T religion/' says the 
very liberal Quinet, "had adopted for its rule 
to spare the ancient religion, there is no doubt 
that, within a given time, the one which spared 
its adversary would have disappeared before 
that one which neglected no opportunity to 
crush it out." Catholicism being unwilling 
to renounce its claim to absolute domination, 
Protestantism was unwilling to preserve for it 
the chance of regaining that domination, and, 
more politic than Christian, the States-General 
abolished a worship whose existence was a con- 
stant menace for the State and a social danger. 
To accord full and entire liberty to a Church 
which had vow T ed the destruction of the Reforma- 
tion, was for them a generosity w T hich they did 
not comprehend. The Prince of Orange him- 
self regarded as a necessity such a course. 
" The States-General," says he in his Apology, 
" have learned, from the daring enterprises and 
treasons of the enemies who abound among us, 
that their government is in danger of inevitable 



172 * William the Taciturn. 

ruin if they do not hinder the exercise of the 
Romish religion. ... It is not reasonable that 
such persons should enjoy a privilege by means 
of which they have wished to deliver the coun- 
try into the hands of the enemy." 

Eight days after the union of the insurgent 
Provinces, William was married, at Dort, to 
the Princess Charlotte of Bourbon. The dis- 
orderly conduct of his wife Anna, had induced 
him to ask of an ecclesiastical tribunal to pro- 
nounce a divorce from her. The case is pro- 
vided for in the teachings of the Gospel, and 
the Protestant ministers, in view of the clearly 
proved infidelity of the marriage vow and of an 
inveterate moral perversity, declared the new 
marriage of the Prince of Orange legitimate, 
and hesitated not to celebrate it. 

Charlotte of Bourbon was a daughter of the 
Duke of Montpensier, or e of the most violent 
of French Catholics. She had sought at Hei- 
delberg, at the court of the Elector Palatine, a 
refuge from the persecution and hatred of her 
own family, which was incensed at her sympa- 
thies for Protestantism. This was in 1572. 
The Prince had seen her during his journeys in 
Germany, and had learned to esteem the quali- 



William the Taciturn. 173 

ties which graced her. He appreciated all that 
was grand in the voluntary exile of this young 
woman, involving, as it did, the sacrifice of her 
country and the love of her nearest relatives 
to the holy requirements of her faith. The 
brilliant and frivolous grandee of Brussels had 
contracted with Anna of Saxony an alliance 
favorable to his ambition ; but the Taciturn, 
converted now to the Gospel, consulted only 
his heart-inclinations and his religious convic- 
tions. He desired a companion according to 
God's law and his own heart, and, without anxiety 
as to the enemies which this union might create 
for him, he entered into it with joy. His brother, 
the Count John of Nassau, had endeavored to 
persuade him from this purpose by represent- 
ing to him the wrath which his divorce would 
not fail to excite among the relatives of the 
Princess Anna, and the pretext which his new 
marriage would furnish to the French Govern- 
ment to abandon his cause. " I can assure you, 
my brother," answered William, with a noble 
independence, "that my intention, since God 
has given me some degree of understanding, 
has always inclined to this : not to concern my- 
self about words and menaces in things which 



174 William the Taciturn. 

I believe myself to do with a good and clear 
conscience, and without doing wrong to my 
neighbor ; and, in fact, if I had felt inclined to 
pay any regard to the words of the people at 
large, or menaces of princes, or other like diffi- 
culties, I should never have embarked in affairs 
and actions so dangerous, and so contrary to 
the will of the King, my former master, and 
even to the counsel of many of my relatives 
and friends." The Count John confessed sub- 
sequently that his brother had done well in 
persisting in his determination, and that he 
possessed in Charlotte of Bourbon " an inesti- 
mable treasure." 

The Prince of Orange had manifested his in- 
clinations to the Princess with a truly Chris- 
tian simplicity and straightforwardness. He 
wrote to her that he was no longer young, but 
that he was forty-two years old, and that he 
was not rich because he had already numerous 
children to dowry, and heavy debts contracted 
in the service of his unhappy country. Char- 
lotte was happy and proud to share the lot of 
such a man. She was worthy of him. 

Meanwhile Requesens, having obtained pos- 
session of the island of Tholen on the Zeeland 



William the Taciturn. 175 

coast, directed an expedition against still more 
important places on the coast, and which 
were consequently useful to protect the arrival 
of the forces which he expected from Spain. 
This enterprise was accomplished with no less 
ability than daring. 

The Spaniards had obtained foothold in Zee- 
land and cut this Province in two. William saw 
himself in imminent danger of having nothing 
but Holland left to help him oppose the Span- 
iards. The resources of this little Province were 
already exhausted ; the contest was on the 
point of becoming impossible any longer. The 
Prince now began to think seriously of break- 
ing off all connection with Philip II., and of 
escaping forever from his tyranny by seeking 
for his country another sovereign. He did not 
believe that the two insurgent provinces, Hol- 
land and Zeeland, were capable of forming an 
independent State, and the time seemed to have 
come for throwing off the legal fiction of alle- 
giance to the King of Spain. Various confer- 
ences, which had been entered upon under the 
conciliatory influence of the Emperor of Austria, 
had served no other purpose than to demon- 
strate more fully the differences of the two 



176 William the Taciturn. 

parties, and to deepen the gulf which separated 
them. 

On the 1st of October, 1575, William for- 
mally proposed to the Deputies of the two 
Provinces, either to submit to the conditions of 
Spain, or to seek some other monarch as pro- 
tector. After several days of hesitation and 
reflection, the grandees and the representatives 
of the towns of Holland and Zeeland, in session 
at Delft, voted unanimously that " their duty was 
to abandon the King, as a tyrant who sought to 
oppress and destroy his subjects, and that it 
was proper for them to choose another sover- 
eign." They left to the Prince this choice, on 
condition that it be ratified by the delegates of 
the country. 

It was to England at first that the Prince 
offered the sovereignty of his country — " that 
beautiful daughter," to use his own picturesque 
expression, " which he had to give away." But 
Queen Elizabeth prolonged the courtship, and 
finally refused to pledge herself, from motives 
of economy, and fear of Philip. The Dutch 
envoys returned to their country, April 19th, 
1576, and reported to the Government the un- 
success of their efforts. 



William the Taciturn. 177 

This new failure threw William into the 
most painful perplexity. He was in need of 
money ; the communications between Holland 
and Zeeland had been interrupted since the 
recent occupation of the island of Schouwen by 
the Spaniards, and foreign powers refused the 
succor which he had expected. The two Prov- 
inces, impoverished and enfeebled by their long 
struggle, remained solitary and alone, as at the 
outset of the revolt. A desperate measure now 
presented itself to the mind of the Prince, and 
he turned to it as to a last but a sure resource 
for preserving, in spite of fortune, Batavian 
liberty. He resolved to cut open all the dikes, 
to destroy all the ports, and then to embark 
himself with the entire population, and go and 
seek beyond the seas a new country. He would 
have abandoned ancient Holland to the ocean, 
and left to the King of Spain only inaccessible 
marshes and desert sand-banks in the place of 
a living and unconquerable nation. But the 
unexpected death of Requesens, who was car- 
ried off by a violent fever in March of the next 
year, (1577,) spared him this sad extremity, and 
reanimated his hopes. 

While the Court of Spain, undecided as to the 



1 78 William the Taciturn. 

choice of a new Governor, left the administra- 
tion of the Netherlands in the timid and un- 
skilled hands of the Council of State, William, 
" seizing the occasion by the forelock," renewed 
relations with the most influential men of the 
fifteen Provinces which had remained faithful to 
Philip and the Pope, with the view of uniting 
all his fellow-citizens into one bond against the 
common oppressor. The excesses of the Span- 
ish soldiers, who, deprived of their pay, pillaged 
Maestricht and Antwerp, and spread themselves 
throughout all Belgium as brigands athirst for 
rapine and murder, contributed not a little to 
favor the reunion which he had always desired. 
The people of the devastated or menaced Prov- 
inces sprang up, as from a dream, " in order not 
to be swallowed up alive." 

The Walloon and Flemish Representatives 
assembled at Ghent, and deliberated under the 
very cannons of the citadel, from which the 
Spaniards had not yet been expelled. Marnix 
de Sainte-Aldegonde represented in this assem- 
bly William the Taciturn and Holland, and had 
authority to treat in their name. The greatest 
obstacle to the alliance was the difference in 
religion. The attachment of the fifteen Belgian 



/ 



William the Taciturn. 179 

Provinces to Catholicism was as earnest as the 
devotion of the Hollanders and Zeelanders to the 
Reformation. William, in the manifestoes which 
he addressed to the Congress, carefully endeavor- 
ed to turn away the debates from this sentiment, 
and to make it be forgotten in the absorbing 
interest of the political phase of the question. He 
knew well that the hatred for the foreign troops, 
and the love of the ancient liberties, were senti- 
ments common both to Catholics and to the 
Reformed. It was upon this platform that he 
based himself in order to gain the cause of the 
union. He rose above all the difficulties, stirred 
up the common patriotism, disarmed the dis- 
trust of the fanatics, and finally, by force of 
prudence, of genius, and of conscientious sincer- 
ity, caused to be signed, on the 8th of Novem- 
ber, 1576, the compact of reconciliation between 
all the Provinces. 

In this memorable document, which was 
called the Pacification of Ghent, the Reforma- 
tion was recognized as the established Church 
in Holland and Zeeland, and was tolerated in 
the rest of the territory, provided its worship 
should not be public. The Inquisition was 
abolished, and the entire country, inspired with 



180 William the Taciturn. 

one heart and one will, pledged itself by its 
Deputies to drive out the Spaniards. The 
Prince of Orange was to be the chief of the 
Confederation, and continued to be the lieu- 
tenant, admiral, and general of Philip II. in the 
Provinces of the south, as in those of the north, 
until the States-General, having been convoked 
on the basis of the Assembly which had re- 
ceived the abdication of Charles V., should 
decide otherwise. This new and truly national 
Congress was to be charged with the complet- 
ing and sanctioning of the compact of Ghent. 



William the Taciturn. 181 



CHAPTER XIV. 



Don John — His flatteries — William unmasks him — Perpetual 
edict — The Prince opposes it — The Governor endeavors in 
vain to corrupt him — Conferences at Gertruydenburg — 
Energy and skill of William — Execution of a Protestant. 



ILLIAM of Orange had always, to cite 



* * his own words, " strongly preached con- 
cord, and declared that disunion had caused all 
the misfortunes " of his country. The Pacifica- 
tion of Ghent realized his most cherished wishes, 
and inspired him with confidence for the future. 
If the very flower of the Spanish army had 
fallen without being able to conquer the little 
Province of Holland from those who were 
scoffingly called " poor beggars," what might 
not be hoped now from the united forces of the 
whole nation ? 

The entire country sympathized with the 
sentiments of the Prince, and welcomed with 
transports of joy the proclamation of the Paci- 
fication. At about the same time a new sue- 




12 



182 



William the Taciturn. 



cess heightened the general satisfaction. That 
portion of Zeeland which the Spaniards had 
seized upon the year preceding was retaken by 
the patriots. A few days before this joyous 
news was made public, the successor of Reque- 
sens, Don John of Austria, had arrived at Lux- 
emburg, on the borders of the Netherlands, 
after having traversed France in the disguise 
of a Moorish slave. 

This man — a natural son of Charles Y., the 
conqueror of the Turks at Lepanto, the young, 
fair-formed, brilliant, and brave successor of 
Requesens — seemed to be the very man to cap- 
tivate the people, whom neither the cunning of 
Granvelle nor the ferocity of Alva, nor the 
hypocritical moderation of Requesens,* had 
succeeded in conquering. His brilliant birth 
was fully matched by personal fame and per- 
sonal charms. The Taciturn was not the man, 
however, to be caught by such a snare. He 
discovered at once that the King of Spain had 
simply changed his instrument, while yet pur- 
suing the very same end ; namelv. the mainte- 

* " His friends disputed whether he was greater in the field 
or in the council, but it is certain that he was great in 
neither. His bigotry was equal to that of Alva, but it was 
impossible to rival the Duke in cruelty/' — Motley. 



William the Taciturn. 183 

nance of his despotism and the exclusive exercise 
of the Catholic religion. He felt confident that 
his romantic antagonist had not, any more than 
the other viceroys of Philip II., either the power 
or the intention of making any real concession. 
He hastened to put the States-General on their 
guard against " the wiles and caresses of this 
lion " in the disguise of an innocent sheep. On 
the 30th of November, 1576, he wrote to them 
from Middelburg in Zeeland : " Antwerp, that 
city formerly so powerful and rich, but which is 
now the most unhappy and abandoned in 
Christendom, has come to that simply for 
having dared to send away the troops of the 
Kins:. You mav all be sure of being destined 
to a place at the same banquet. You may 
forget the past, but princes never forget it, 
when they have within reach the means of 
avenging themselves. Nature teaches them to 
attain their end by cunning when they have 
failed of it by violence. They act like cunning 
children ; they whistle softly in order to attract 
the birds which they wish to ensnare. They 
will not be dainty of falsehoods and promises. 
But, I beg you, consent to nothing before the 
Spanish and other foreign soldiers shall have 



184 William the Taciturn. 

previously quit the country. Beware of allow- 
ing your forces to be disbanded ; this would be 
to put into the hands of Don John the knife 
destined to butcher you." 

He then laid down, with his usual precision 
and positiveness, the conditions without which 
any form of negotiation seemed to him simply 
a bait, and any agreement whatever a blunder. 
"Remember," said he, "that this is not a 
matter of play, but that you have simply the 
choice between ruin on the one hand, or a 
manful resistance on the other. Don John 
must be required to send away forthwith the 
Spaniards. All our rights ought to be sanc- 
tioned anew, and the Governor should make 
oath to respect them. Let the States-General 
appoint new Councils of State and of Finance. 
The General Assembly should have the privi- 
lege of convening twice or thrice a year, and in 
fact as often as should seem to it good. The 
States-General ought to administer all impor- 
tant affairs. The citadels should be every- 
where demolished, and the Governor should 
not be allowed to enroll troops or establish 
garrisons without the consent of the States- 
General" 



William the Taciturn. 



185 



All these counsels were based on the Pacifi- 
cation of Ghent, the ratification of which was 
all that the Prince demanded, Don John, after 
long and fruitless discussions with the Deputies 
of the States-General, was constrained to yield 
to the wish of the people, who had universally 
expressed their adherence to this document by 
placing their signatures, by thousands, to a 
document slightly modified from the Pacifica- 
tion, known under the name of the Union of 
Brussels, from the fact that its authors were of 
that city. In the face of this emphatic mani- 
festation, Don John consented to conclude, on 
the 1 2th of February, 1577, an agreement or 
Perpetual Edict, which contained the promise 
of the departure of the foreign soldiers, and 
confirmed all the privileges, charters, and con- 
stitutions of the Netherlands. 

A few days before this agreement, the Prince 
of Orange had intercepted several letters of the 
Governor, which gave the lie to all his words. 
He had thus obtained the confirmation of all 
his suspicions as to -'this young hot-head's 
being impatient to plunge his hands into 
blood/' and no less accustomed to dissemble 
than his predecessors. William learned from 



1 86 William the Taciturn. 



these letters, that it had been determined to 
get possession of all the fortified places and to 
reduce the country to the most absolute sub- 
jection. He warned the States-General of this 
recent design, and supplicated them " to have 
pity on their poor country," and to put no con- 
fidence in the public professions of Don John 
and his envoys. Hence the perpetual edict, 
instead of satisfying him, filled him with indig- 
nation. He was specially irritated to find that, 
despite his reiterated advice, the fortresses, 
which paralyzed the cities by the terror of 
tyranny, instead of being demolished, had been 
allowed to be repaired and to be put again into 
the hands of the Spaniards. He foresaw that 
this edict would result in the saddest conse- 
quences, and he refused to publish it in Holland 
and Zeeland. And he wrote to the States- 
General, in the name of these two Provinces, 
explaining to them the reasons of his disap- 
probation. 

He pointed out all the subterfuges by which 
the sanction of the Peace of Ghent was modi- 
fied in the new edict. He complained espe- 
cially of the article by which the States-General 
pledged themselves to pay the dues of the for- 



William the Taciturn, 187 

eign army, which they had just stigmatized as 
factious, and which was all covered with the 
blood of their fellow-citizens, and gorged with 
their wealth. He declared that the Constitution 
of the country was violated, inasmuch as the 
States-General had not recovered the ancient 
right of assembling themselves whenever they 
should judge fit, and inasmuch as the Spanish 
authority had trodden under foot the laws of 
the Provinces by keeping in prison the Count of 
Buren, his eldest son, who was guilty of no 
crime, and whose detention was evidence that 
under the Spanish Government no one could 
count on his life or liberty. 

Don John saw well enough that so long as 
he should have William against him his man- 
euvers would be unmasked, and the lulling of 
the Netherlands to passive submission would 
fail. " The Prince of Orange," wrote he to 
Philip, " is the pilot. It is he who guides the 
bark, and he can of himself either destroy or 
save it. We would have overcome our most 
dreaded obstacle could we succeed in gaining 
him. ,, It seemed to him impossible that the 
Taciturn would not " yield to his propositions " 
in consideration of " very advantageous terms." 



1 88 William the Taciturn. 

He therefore invited William simply to abstain 
from all participation in the struggle of the 
Provinces, and invited him to lead henceforth 
a " quiet life" by retiring to Germany. He 
offered to him, in exchange for his non-inter- 
ference and retirement, the favors of the King, 
the aggrandizement of his house, and the most 
brilliant prospects for the future. " You can- 
not imagine," said he to him, " all that I shall 
be able to do for you." 

William did not doubt the good faith of Don 
John. Nothing could in one sense have been 
more easy than for him to betray his country ; 
the moment was singularly propitious ; Philip 
almost fell upon his knees before him. But his 
country and his religion were dearer to him 
than all the rest of the world ; his soul was 
utterly incorruptible. 

He responded to the Governor that "the 
public security and prosperity were far above 
his own personal security and prosperity, and 
that having always disregarded his own personal 
interests, so he was still resolved to do so long 
as life should last." 

Don John succeeded better with the nobles and 
gentry of Brabant ; he was soon surrounded by 



William the Taciturn. 189 

high personages anxious for dignities, positions, 
and money, and happy of finding, in the Per- 
petual Edict, a sort of pretext for resuming their 
profession of courtiers. As to the people at 
large, they took courage from the example of 
the nobles, and, believing themselves assured of 
peace, abandoned themselves with enthusiasm 
to the admiration with which the graciousness 
of the son of Charles V. inspired them, and to 
the satisfaction awakened by his manners and 
affected frankness. On the first of May, a 
short time after the departure of the Spanish 
troops, the young and flattering Governor made 
his triumphal entry into Brussels amid the ap- 
plause of the whole population. 

Meantime the Prince of Orange was calmly 
awaiting the reaction of public opinion, and 
was steadily increasing his already great influ- 
ence upon public affairs. Holland and Zeeland 
formed, with him, but a single body and soul. 
There was not perhaps in these two Provinces 
a single person who was not determined to 
follow him without hesitation into whatever 
enterprises he should undertake, and to look up 
to him almost as a prophet. And in the other 
parts of the Netherlands he was regarded as 



190 William the Taciturn. 

the best friend and the firmest support of the 
national liberties. 

Don John had too much sense to be blinded 
by his own popularity, and was well aware that 
it had not destroyed the absolute confidence 
which the masses of the people had in William. 
" The people," wrote he, " is bewitched by the 
Prince of Orange. They love him every- where, 
and fear him and wish him for their master. 
They inform him of every thing, and no reso- 
lution is taken without consulting him." Con- 
sequently he made still another effort to concil- 
iate him, and sent to him to Middelburg 
where he resided, four devoted agents. Two 
Deputies of the States-General of Belgium had 
preceded them, and had endeavored to induce 
him to accept the Perpetual Edict. These per- 
sons now joined all together. A conference 
took place at Gertruydenberg between these six 
representatives of the Catholic party on the one 
part, and the Prince of Orange aided, by Sainte- 
Aldegonde and four other delegates of the 
Holland Reformation, on the other part. The 
debate was protracted, and the envoys of Philip 
II. resorted to every diplomatic artifice to over- 
come the firmness of the Taciturn. 



William the Taciturn. 191 

They began at first by evading every serious 
point, and by insisting complacently on the good 
intentions of the Spanish Government, on the 
promptness with which it had withdrawn the 
army, and on the advantages of peace ; they 
besought the Prince, and, through him, the 
Provinces of Holland and Zeeland, not to 
separate themselves from the great majority of 
the country, and they proposed, in the name 
of Don John, to come to an agreement as to 
the best manner of convoking the States- 
General. 

William insisted on limiting the scope of the 
discussion, and demanded the full carrying out 
of the Pacification of Ghent. He bitterly com- 
plained that the Belgians had not yet demol- 
ished the citadels, which he designated as 
" nests and caves of tyranny." He spoke of 
his imprisoned son, and of his estates, which 
had not been restored to him, of a multitude of 
other confiscations not less odious, of the viola- 
tion of the ancient Constitutions, and of the 
bloody edicts which were still being executed in 
all their rigor, in spite of the. pretense of their 
suspension. He closed by saying " that, since 
in the Pacification of Ghent it had been agreed 



192 William the Taciturn. 

upon certain points which for the time being 
would enable the parties to live in peace with 
each other, it was more than reasonable that, 
firstly, the articles of said Pacification should be 
satisfied, and that the rest should be referred 
to the States -General." 

Embarrassed by the precision and justness 
of the argument, the agents of Catholicism and 
of Spain demanded guarantees of the fidelity 
with which the Prince and his partisans would 
observe the compact ; and, with a feigned 
humility, they expressed apprehensions lest in 
the absence of such guarantees the Reformed 
might make war upon them. " War !" exclaimed 
William. " What have you to fear ? We 
are but a handful of men, but a mere worm as 
against the King of Spain, and you are fifteen 
Provinces against two. What, then, have you 
to fear ? " 

Reduced to silence a second time, the Catho- 
lic envoys changed their tactics, and made an 
effort to turn against their invincible opponent 
his own arms. "Will you promise," said one 
of them, " to submit yourself to whatever the 
States-General shall ordain, as you are obligated 
by the Pacification ?" The Prince perceived, 



William the Taciturn. 193 

with his usual penetration, the trap which was 
laid for him. He knew very well that, at bot- 
tom, the religious question was here, as every- 
where, the main point in the debate. He had 
deferred it at Ghent, counting on the fruits of 
their political union to educate the public mind 
up to the point of religious toleration. Sur- 
prised and grieved at this question of his adver- 
sary, he answered at first vaguely, and in order 
to give himself more time to weigh his defini- 
tive answer : " I cannot say." Then the Flem- 
ish Deputy, pressing him for a decision, added, 
" So that you are not willing to accept the 
decision of the States-General?" Orange re- 
plied with an increasing circumspection, " I 
do not say that ; but it might be such that we 
would accept it, and it might also not be such." 
The Catholic envoy insisted, and, with confi- 
dence that he had struck the decisive blow, 
" You would not then be willing to submit to the 
States-General touching the exercise of relig- 
ion ? " " No, assuredly ! " exclaimed William, 
with the emphasis of a man with whom the 
liberty of conscience is above all law, and obe- 
dience to God the first of all duties ; (i no, 
assuredly ! for, to tell the truth, we see clearly 



194 William the Taciturn. 

that you design to annihilate us, and we are 
unwilling to be annihilated." 

By these w T ords the Taciturn broke off the 
conference. All the subtleties and ruses of 
these Spanish commissioners had failed to 
succeed any better than the fair promises of 
Don John, to induce him to sacrifice the Refor- 
mation to the intolerance of the King or of 
the Belgian people. In matters of faith, like 
all other Protestants he admitted no human 
authority, and this principle was the secret 
of his victory — the rock against which were 
wrecked both Philip II. and the majority of 
the Provinces. 

The Governor, after this second diplomatic 
check, gave up all hope of an accommo- 
dation with the Prince, and made ready to 
draw the sword. In the meantime he set to 
work afresh the bloody executions of the Inqui- 
sition. He ordered all the Bishops and the 
Provincial Councils, to execute the decrees 
of the Council of Trent, and thus manifested 
in what sense he understood the Pacification 
of Ghent. A poor tailor of Marines was 
executed in his presence on the 15 th of 
June, 1577, about a month after the negotia- 



William the Taciturn. 195 

tions, for having been present at' a Protestant 
sermon in the city. William wrote to the 
judges of this unfortunate man during the 
trial, urging them not to rekindle the fire 
of religious persecution ; but his intervention 
was in vain. 



196 William the Taciturn. 



CHAPTER XV. 

The Prince of Orange makes a tour of Holland and Zeeland 
— Enthusiasm of the people — He writes to the States-Gen- 
eral in regard to Don John — His visit to Brussels — Jeal- 
ousy of the Nobles — He is appointed Ruart — War recom- 
mences — The " close union " of Brussels — Defeat at Gem- 
blours — Indignation of the people — Prudent conduct of 
William — His efforts for religious peace — Resumption of 
hostilities — Death of Don John. 

1 T 7ILLIAM OF ORANGE had not allowed 
^ * himself for a single moment to be de- 
ceived by the efforts of Don John toward peace. 
He had received his overtures without in the 
least relaxing his vigilance, and, while the nego- 
tiations were taking their course, he kept forti- 
fying himself in Holland and Zeeland. Encour- 
aged by his presence, the inhabitants of these 
two Provinces reconstructed their dikes and 
repaired the ravages of the ocean before the 
war recommenced. The Prince went from town 
to town, directing and encouraging this immense 
work by his perseverance and energy. Every 
where he met with joyous faces and thankful 
hearts. " Our Father William has come ! See him 



William the Taciturn. 197 

there ! " exclaimed the multitude, who pressed 
forward to catch a glimpse of their liberator. 
He lavished affectionate words and warm grasps 
of the hand upon every body. There was no 
pomp, no ceremonious dignity on either side ; 
no gaudy decorations, no triumphal arches, no 
noisy music : the multitude crowded to welcome 
him on his passage, as a family of children 
going out to meet their father ; and William 
received these marks of sympathy, not with 
the pride and state of a victorious potentate, 
but with the simplicity and cordiality of a 
parent. 

Meantime he continued to cultivate good re- 
lations with the States-General of the Catholic 
Provinces, and urged them to hold fast to the 
Pacification of Ghent as to an anchor in a 
storm. He enlarged, as usual, upon the bad 
faith of the Governor, and accused him of labor- 
ing to annihilate them after having divided 
them. Don John, in soon afterward seizing 
upon the chateau of Namur, by means of Ger- 
man mercenaries whom he had managed to 
retain in the Netherlands, justified, in an em- 
phatic manner, the distrusts and suspicions of 

his antagonist. To exculpate himself from this 

13 



198 William the Taciturn. 

act of violence, he pretended that William was 
plotting against his life, and that he, therefore, 
could be in safety only in a fortress. In an- 
swer to this calumniating imputation, the 
Taciturn dispatched Sainte-Aldegonde and 
another of his best friends to the States-Gen- 
eral, before whom his conduct had been incrim- 
inated. He sent to them one of his finest let- 
ters. "Don John/' said he, "wishes to chastise 
the ones by the hand of the others ; to excite 
the jealousy of one portion of this country 
against the other. But examine carefully my 
conduct in all points as to which I am accused, 
and . you will see that all that I desire for my 
country and for myself is to enjoy in peace the 
union and the legitimate exercise of our liber- 
ties : such is the end to which aspire all good 
patriots, and to which I have incessantly 
tended." 

The States-General gave their entire atten- 
tion and full confidence to Sainte-Aldegonde 
and his colleague, as the Prince had expected. 
They met the Governor with firm words, and 
required of him, in conformity to the Pacifica- 
tion of Ghent, to dismiss the German troops, 
and to convoke the deputies of the Seventeen 



' William the Taciturn. 199 

Provinces to a general assembly, and then to 
put their decisions into execution. 

Don John increased still more his unjust con- 
duct by seeking to capture Antwerp by a strat- 
agem like that whereby he had seized Namur ; 
and the Prince of Orange received from the 
States-General the most pressing invitation to 
come to Brussels, to aid them by his presence 
and by his counsel. 

William, without heeding the affectionate ap- 
prehensions of his wife, and the suspicions of 
his friends, who looked upon this journey as 
dangerous, as taking him to a city which had 
been the tomb of so many patriots and the den 
of the most ardent royalists, entered on the 23d 
of September, after an absence of eleven years, 
into the capital of the Netherlands. His ar- 
rival was a triumph. The representatives of 
the Provinces welcomed him no less warmly 
and enthusiastically than did the masses, with 
whom he had never lost favor. At this -mo- 
ment of crisis, duped by Don John, divided in 
counsel, doubting even of themselves, they fully 
trusted in the Prince of Orange only. The pro- 
script and the rebel of Philip II. was for them 
all a benefactor and a tutelary genius. 



200 



William the Taciturn. 



The first use which William made of his in- 
fluence upon the delegates was to break off the 
negotiations which they had again entered upon 
with the Spanish Government, which he knew 
perfectly well was determined never to accord 
civil or religious liberty, without which all and 
every peace seemed to him a defeat and an 
ignominy. The sword was now destined to 
take the place of the pen. The later letters ex- 
changed between the Governor and the Flem- 
ish deputies were no longer protocols, but 
challenges. The views of the Taciturn were 
adopted, and he hoped that, after a brief 
campaign, the rights of the nation would 
be assured. He counted upon founding upon 
the ruins of tyranny a kind of representative 
government, a constitutional monarchy. The 
States-General were to have the supremacy, 
under the hereditary protection of a prince 
whom they should themselves have chosen. 
The executive power was to be exercised by a 
council of state, likewise appointed and renewed 
by the deputies of the United Provinces. 

This project was suddenly thwarted by the 
intrigues of the Catholic nobles, who were 
jealous of the constantly increasing influence 



William the Taciturn. 



201 



of the Prince, and displeased with the power 
which he gave to the lower classes in the ad- 
ministration of public affairs. They formed a 
plan of checking this influence by inviting the 
Archduke Matthias of Austria to Brussels, in 
'order to place him in the quality of Protector at 
the head of the Netherlands, and to reign them- 
selves in his place and under his name. These 
cabals were known by William, and they aug- 
mented the affection of the masses and of the 
gentry for his person. One evening, the ses- 
sion of the Council of State having been pro- 
longed to a very late hour, a crowd of people, 
vaguely informed of the designs of the aristoc- 
racy, and fearing some treachery, crowded in 
arms before the palace where the session was 
held, and were on the point of forcing open its 
doors, when the Prince came out to them, 
thanked them for their solicitation, and, seeking 
to allay their fears, urged them to retire. But 
they were loath to do so, and tarried in the 
neighborhood until they were able to escort 
him to his hotel ; after which, sure of his safety, 
they retired in turn to their own houses. 

In the beginning of October, 1577, the Arch- 
duke set out from Vienna for the Netherlands, 



202 William the Taciturn. 

The Taciturn went to meet and welcome him 
at Antwerp ; he judged it more prudent to 
neutralize his influence by remaining at Brus- 
sels than to declare himself against him by 
returning to his faithful Holland. He had too 
much discernment to give an advantage to his 
adversaries, instead of profiting by his high 
position to gain over Matthias, and thus after 
all carry out his own plans. And he soon had 
reason for being glad that he had remained at 
his post. The States-General, on the urgency 
of the Deputies and of the chief citizens of 
Brussels, appointed him to the dignity of Rtiart 
of Brabant — a sort of dictatorship which almost 
always led to royalty. 

By this dignity the Prince had in Flanders 
and Brabant an authority equal, if not superior, 
to that which he already enjoyed in Holland 
and Zeeland. On the 22d of October he was 
installed into his new functions, to the great 
satisfaction of the people, who celebrated the 
event by a day of solemn festivities in the cap- 
ital of the Provinces, at Antwerp, and in several 
other cities. About the same time Utrecht 
placed itself also under his sovereignty. As- 
suredly, if William indulged the ambition with 



William the Taciturn. 203 

which the nobles reproached him, the occasion 
was propitious for gratifying it : the crown of 
the Netherlands was within his grasp. 

After having visited Ghent, where he restored 
tranquillity, which had been disturbed by the 
excesses of the extreme parties, he caused to be 
signed on the 10th of December, at Brussels, a 
new Act of U?iion, by which the members of the 
Romish Church and those of other communions 
pledged themselves to respect and to protect 
each other. This was but another step to the 
realization of the Pacification of Ghent. The 
first compact had easily introduced toleration 
by suppressing persecution ; the new " Union " 
placed the Reformed religion in the same rank 
as the Catholic. It was the result of the efforts 
of the Prince ; and all those who had for so 
long a time been obliged to conceal their faith 
hastened now to profit by this fruit of his pres- 
ence. The Reformed came out from their 
dark alleys, where they had so long been trem- 
bling for their life, and enjoyed the light of 
open day. This Union deserves a place in the 
history of humanity ; it is a beautiful monument 
of the genius of William, and of the noble aspi- 
rations of a whole people in an age of intoler- 



204 William the Taciturn. 

ance. Unfortunately its influence was of short 
duration. 

The Prince, while engaged in establishing 
concord among his compatriots, contracted also 
an alliance with England, and from it obtained 
subsidies. The struggle between Don John 
and him was imminent. They were both 
preparing for it very actively. The Archduke 
had been proclaimed Governor-General in the 
place of the son of Charles V., whom the 
States-General had declared as having forfeited 
all his rights. Matthias, however, had little 
more than the title of his office, while William 
had all the prerogatives. The people stigma- 
tized him, properly enough, as the secretary of 
the Prince, who, in fact, preserved his own 
functions of Ruart, and continued to be, in the 
quality of Lieutenant-General, the real head of 
the Confederation of the Netherlands. 
* Toward the close of January, 1578, Don John 
had succeeded in getting together a few troops, 
but among which were several splendid regi- 
ments of veterans which he had caused to come 
from Italy under the command of Alexander of 
Parma, his nephew, and one of the best captains 
of the age. The States-General, on their part, 



William the Taciturn. 205 

had raised an army as large as that of the hero 
of Lepanto, but without order, without discipline, 
and officered by the chief Flemish grandees, 
the sole merit of whom was their ambition and 
their birth. An old soldier of Charles V., more 
brave than skillful, was the General-in-Chief. 
The Taciturn, in order not to wound certain 
envious rivals, and perhaps also from an appre- 
hension of not being implicitly obeyed, had in 
this case kept himself apart from the enterprise. 
Besides, he had not been chosen by the States- 
General, who, according to the last arrange- 
ments, had the prerogative of appointing to all 
important positions. 

Don John did not wait for the enemy, but 
came himself and offered battle on the 31st of 
January, at Gemblours, near Namur. The 
patriots w T ere routed at the first onset, and 
suffered a complete defeat. This result was 
inevitable, for the Spanish army had every 
condition of victory — military genius, expe- 
rience and courage — while the mass of the 
army of the States-General lacked the first con- 
ditions of success : its officers were incapable or 
divided in counsel, and the majority of them be- 
longed only with half-heart to the cause, 



206 William the Taciturn. 

The news of this disaster filled the people 
with indignation against the Catholic aristoc- 
racy, upon whom they blamed it. At Brussels 
the multitude were determined to punish the 
chief nobles for their supposed treason. But 
for the firmness and influence of William, who 
traversed the streets of the city night and day, 
they would have been assailed in their res- 
idences and massacred without mercy. In 
the midst of these intestine dissensions, which 
increased the misfortune of the defeat, all par- 
ties in the assembly of the Deputies turned to 
him as to a savior, and felt more than ever the 
necessity of union. The Prince by his prudent 
measures put the capital in a complete state of 
defense, and, with the co-operation of the Dep- 
uties, hastened to collect new troops to supply 
the place of the army which had just been lost. 
While at his advice the different Provinces 
consented to new imposts, and while his agents 
were recruiting in Germany — that veritable 
granary of men in the sixteenth century — for 
the next campaign, Amsterdam, imitating the 
example of Utrecht, and of all the other cities 
of Holland, abandoned the royalist party, and 
took sides with the defenders of the national in- 



William the Taciturn. 207 

dependence. This acquisition compensated 
largely for the losses suffered at Gemblours. 
The Reformation especially gained thereby. 

But in the intoxication of their triumph the 
Protestants of Holland and Zeeland abandoned 
themselves to acts of intolerance which greatly 
injured their cause, but which gave occasion to 
a noble exhibition of largeness of view on the 
part of the Taciturn. " We declare to you," 
wrote he to the magistrates of the cities where 
these deplorable excesses had taken place, 
"that you have no right to meddle with the 
conscience of others, so long as they commit 
nothing of a nature to bring wrong to private 
individuals or to scandalize the public." 

In the month of June William defended the 
same principles in a General Synod of the Re- 
formed Churches, held at Dort. And he had 
the happiness of seeing them prevail. The 
leaders of the Protestant Church, yielding to 
his influence, addressed to the Archduke a long 
letter containing a draft of the law for the 
establishment of religious liberty in the Prov- 
inces. The Prince obtained the adhesion 
thereto of Matthias and of the States-General. 
But, at the instigation of the Catholic grandees, 



2o8 William the Tacitijrn. 



the Provincial councils did not accept his 
plan ; the Union, instead of being strengthened, 
was paralyzed, and fresh calamities became 
inevitable. 

Meanwhile the military preparations con- 
tinued on both sides. Toward the close of 
July hostilities were recommenced. After a 
series of skirmishes, the patriots beat the roy- 
alists, on the ist of August, at Rijnemants. 
But this not very decisive battle did not prevent 
Don John from continuing the campaign and 
bidding defiance to the victors. They lacked 
in resources, and were unwilling to run the 
risk of a general engagement. 

While the two armies were watching each 
other in comparative inactivity, the brilliant 
hero of Lepanto was assailed by an obstinate 
power and an incurable melancholy, and on the 
ist of October, 1578, died in his camp near 
Namur. 



William the Taciturn. 209 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Alexander of Parma — His policy — Religious discord in the 
Provinces — Defection of the Catholic Provinces — William 
effects the "union "of Utrecht — Capture and sack of 
Maestricht by the Spaniards — Calumnies against Orange — 
Nobleness and dignity of his defense — He restores order at 
Ghent — He advocates the election of the Duke of Anjou as 
sovereign of the country — His fresh reverses — Public ban 
pronounced against him— His "Apology." 

A LEXANDER of Parma, who, since the 
battle of Gemblours, had not quit the 
presence of Don John, celebrated his obsequies 
and took his place. He was a son of the Prince 
Ottavio Farnese, one of the most illustrious 
generals of Charles V., and of Margaret, the 
former Regent of the Netherlands. The heroic 
Don John, of whom he had been, from his ear- 
liest youth, the companion and the admirer, 
loved him as a brother rather than as an uncle. 
Alexander had inherited the military tastes and 
talents of his father, and added thereto a pa- 
tience and cunning which had put him on a 
footing with the most consummate diplomatists, 



2io William the Taciturn. 

He was capable of conquering by intrigue as 
well as by arms. He was decidedly superior 
to any of the preceding governors. Never had 
the Prince of Orange to contend against a more 
dangerous antagonist. 

The Pacification of Ghent was a truce rather 
than a peace. The religious rancors were hid- 
den, but not extinguished, in the hearts of the 
different parties. The opposition which the 
local authorities of the different Provinces had 
recently made to the system of toleration pro- 
posed by William, proved it only too well. 
Alexander was well aware of this disposition of 
the parties, and he determined to make good 
use of it. By rekindling the fire of civil dis- 
cord he doubled his chances of success. To 
arm the Catholic South against the Protestant 
North — such was his uniform policy. The dis- 
like of the Belgian grandees to the Taciturn, 
and above all their venality, prepared the way 
for him. The Duke of Parma was exceedingly 
expert in buying over a grandee or a regiment 
of soldiers. Personages of consideration sold 
themselves to his Government for a sum of 
money or an office. These shameful treasons 
covered themselves under the cloak of loyalty 



William the Taciturn. 



211 



to the King and to the Church, and served 
to deceive and stir up the fanaticism of the 
masses. 

Already at different points the more zealous 
members of the two Churches were no longer 
able to bear each other, and the stronger party 
persecuted the feebler. It was at Ghent that 
occurred the greatest acts of violence. Provoked 
by the aggressions of bands of Catholics, who, 
under pretext of protecting the clergy of their 
own communion, maltreated and pillaged the 
whole neighborhood, the Reformed party invad- 
ed the cloisters, and hanged two of the chief 
royalists of the city, one of whom had been a 
member of the Council of Blood. 

These insane and culpable acts committed in 
the name of his faith and by his adherents were 
for William a cause for sadness and discourage- 
ment. It was in vain that he disavowed them 
openly ; his enemies accused him of prompting 
them and of approving them, in fact. He was 
made responsible for the faults of his friends, 
who in their turn blamed him for his tolerance. 
But, as is remarked by an author of the time, "He 
ever remained faithful to himself ; his calmness 
was not troubled by any tempest and no unjust 



212 



William the Taciturn. 



reproach could lead him to act without modera- 
tion." Instead of abandoning a country which 
showed itself so unjust and so ungrateful to 
him, he still steadily pursued his work. By his 
efforts and his presence the excited passions 
were again appeased in the city of Ghent, and, 
on the 27th of December, 1578, a religious 
peace was there published by general consent. 

Troubles of the same character, fomented by 
the agents of Parma, had broken out some time 
previously at Arras ; and these troubles hast- 
ened the catastrophe which the Prince of Orange 
most apprehended. The Walloon Provinces of 
Artois, Hainaut, Lille, Douai, and Orchies, 
where the Romish Church was all-prevalent, 
rejected the Union of Brussels, refused to obey 
the States-General of the nation, and formed, on 
the 6th of January, 1579, a separate League, 
thus manifesting the utter aversion of the 
Netherland Catholics for their fellow-citizens 
of the Protestant faith. 

This defection gave to the Prince of Orange 
an occasion of grief rather than of surprise. 
He was already prepared for it, and, in order to 
lessen and arrest the consequences thereof, he 
hastened to unite more closely than ever Hoi- 



William the Taciturn. 213 

land and Zeeland to the five other northern 
Provinces. He drew up, in December, 1578, a 
treaty of alliance, and, on the 29th of January, 
1579, the Union of Utrecht was proclaimed, as 
an offset to the counter-revolutionary confeder- 
ation of Arras, which constituted in fact the 
basis of the Republic of the Netherlands. This 
celebrated document guaranteed liberty of con- 
science, and left intact the ancient Constitutions 
of each Province. These leagued Provinces 
had no idea of founding a popular Republic, 
but simply of defending themselves more effect- 
ually against foreign oppression by united action. 
The notion of forming an independent state, 
and of dispensing with a king, was suggested to 
the people only subsequently and by the force 
of circumstances. A general assembly of the 
Deputies of the seven Provinces was to assemble 
at Utrecht as often as the necessities of the case 
called for it ; this was the bond and political 
center of the new league. Matthias and William 
preserved in this league their respective roles ; 
and Philip still remained in William's eyes the 
sovereign, guilty and disobeyed indeed, but 
yet legitimate and legal, of all the Provinces. 

Nations as well as individuals disengage them- 

14 



214 William the Taciturn. 

selves but slowly and gradually from their time- 
consecrated traditions and their old customs. 
The forms of the past reign still, even when 
the essence of the matter is changed. 

The Prince of Orange could not be content 
at seeing ten Provinces outside of this league. 
He therefore made great efforts, before they 
should have taken a final step — that is, after 
they had broken from the union of Brussels 
and before they should give themselves over to 
the Spaniards — to effect a reconciliation which 
should preserve his country from a permanent 
dismemberment. But his counsels, his promises 
and his prayers, as also those of the northern 
States-General, accomplished no result. The 
venality of the nobles, the superstition of the 
people and the maneuvers of the priests con- 
summated the schism of the nation. In May 
the Walloon envoys signed an " Accord" with 
the Government of the King. The Duke of 
Parma, with a single stroke of the pen, subjected 
the half of the Netherlands, and thus gained, 
without shedding a drop of blood, the most 
brilliant of his victories. 

But he neglected not the means of succeed- 
ing also by arms. While carrying on these ne- 



William the Taciturn. 215 

gotiations he laid siege to Maestricht, and, in 
spite of the vigorous resistance of the inhabit- 
ants and the efforts made by William to succor 
them, captured it on the 29th of June. This 
new success was followed by a frightful massa- 
cre, in which was manifested afresh the habitual 
ferocity of the Spanish soldiery. The wretched 
city was" literally depopulated. It is calculated 
that only four hundred persons survived the 
carnage, which endured three days, and that 
the number of the victims was twelve thousand. 

The enemies of the Prince endeavored, as 
often before had been done, to throw upon him 
the responsibility for this deplorable event. He 
was accused of having, by his carelessness, de- 
livered to death thousands of human beings and 
occasioned the ruin of a flourishing city. Some 
even went so far as to suspect him of treason. 
A letter was addressed to the Northern States- 
General, and presented while they were in ses- 
sion. This letter was a violent attack upon the 
Prince. The secretary, after having commenced 
the public reading of this letter, suddenly 
paused on seeing so many gross calumnies. 
William, without losing his usual composure, 
called for the letter himself, and continued to 



2l6 



William the Taciturn, 



read it aloud to its end. Thereupon he com- 
posedly remarked that he was almost weary of 
these attacks against his person, and above all 
of the accusation, so often repeated, that but for 
him it would be easy to conclude with Spain an 
honorable peace. " The Prince of Parma and 
the disunited Provinces," said he, ''pretend to 
regard this war as carried on against myself 
and in my name, as if the question only referred 
to the name and person of the general. Now, 
if this be the case, I beg you to consider whether 
this does not arise from the fact that I have 
been faithful to my country. However, if I am 
an obstacle, I am ready to remove it. If you, 
therefore, judge proper, in order to take from 
the enemy all means of attacking us, to choose 
another chief and another conductor of your 
affairs, I promise you to serve him and to obey 
him with all my heart. By this means we will 
leave to the enemy no ground upon which he 
can attempt to divide us." The whole assembly 
arose at once, and protested their attachment 
and their unshaken confidence in the great man 
who, in the midst of continual difficulties and 
dangers, had always supported and consoled 
and guided them. 



William the Taciturn, 217 

Alexander of Parma himself, in fact, amply 
justified the conduct of the Taciturn in regard 
to Maestricht, and that too with a sincerity 
which cannot be contested, in that, at the very 
commencement of the siege, he wrote: "If the 
Prince of Orange is able to succeed in succor- 
ing the place he will do it, and if he does it none 
of our expeditions has any chance of success." 
The Prince had not been able to do it, because 
of the irresolution and the habitual parsimony 
of the States-General, who had responded to 
his eloquent appeals only by tardy and insuffi- 
cient subsidies. 

Scarcely had he confuted these calumnies, 
and acquired a fresh mark of the sympathies of 
all upright men, when he was obliged to return 
to Ghent, where a set of incorrigible dema- 
gogues had disturbed anew the public order. 
They spread there against him rumors the 
most absurd and the most unjust. A former 
monk, who in changing his religion had simply 
changed the form of his fanaticism, boldly 
preached to the people that the Taciturn was at 
bottom an atheist, that he knew no other God 
than political expedience, to which he was en- 
tirely devoted, and that he desired to establish 



218 



William the Taciturn. 



what he called a religions peace, simply in order 
to re-establish Popery and the Inquisition. On 
the 24th of July, 1579, William had written to 
the magistrates of Ghent to refute these violent 
declamations, which had actually succeeded in 
prejudicing against him the less instructed and 
most excitable of the inhabitants. He said to 
them that " his past life and the services ren- 
dered by him to the country at the expense of 
so many losses and labors ought to be a suffi- 
cient evidence of his fidelity." Nevertheless he 
thought it not amiss to repeat once again that 
he had never presumed " to treat either of 
peace or of war or of alliance without the ad- 
vice of the people." His acts in Holland and 
Zeeland abundantly proved that he was always 
disposed to consult them. And he was, added 
he, almost astonished that any one could doubt 
for a moment his devotion to the religion for 
which he had so much suffered. " I desire," 
said he, with a legitimate pride, " that the work 
which such accusers have accomplished during 
the last ten years should be compared with that 
which I have done. I admit that I have not 
approved of the course of action of certain per- 
sons ; but as to every thing which concerns the 



William the Taciturn. 219 

true advancement of religion, I am not willing 
to yield to any one ; even these persons who 
accuse me so boldly have only that degree of 
liberty of speech which I have bought for them 
by the blood of my friends, by my labors, and 
by my excessive expenses. To say the very 
least, they owe it to me that they are at liberty 
to speak with such license/' 

A few days after this letter he repaired to 
Ghent himself. As had so often been the case, 
so also now, his presence and his counsels un- 
sealed the eyes of the deluded multitude, and 
the " factious peace-disturbers vanished away 
like birds of darkness on the first approach of 
sunlight." After having quelled the anarchy, 
he accepted the government of Flanders and 
returned to Antwerp, where he had been resid- 
ing for some time, and where he had also several 
times repressed outbreaks. 

-In the course of the same year (1579) the 
Prince of Orange, who had learned to place no 
reliance on the peace-proposals of Spain, began 
to favor the pretensions of the Duke of Anjou to 
the sovereignty of the Netherlands. The con- 
ferences which had been held at Cologne in view 
of reconciling the Provinces with their former 



220 



William the Taciturn. 



master had., after seven months of deliberations 
and interminable protocols, demonstrated the 
necessity of putting some successor in the place 
of Philip. Now, the brother of the King of 
France seemed to the Taciturn the best of all 
the candidates, inasmuch as he would naturally 
assure to the emancipated Provinces the alli- 
ance and the support of that nation which was 
most capable of protecting their independence. 

The next year (1580) was one of the most 
trying vears of William's whole life. One of his 
friends, the Count Renneberg, betrayed the 
national cause, and surrendered to the Span- 
iards Groningen, the oapital of the Province 
of Friesland and Drenthe, of which he was 
Stadtholder. This was an immense loss for the 
patriots. The Union of Utrecht was enfeebled 
and crippled at its very start. And, worse still, 
the army sent to recapture the place was cut to 
pieces. The States-General lacked, as was often 
the case with them, the resources for continuing 
the war, and the local authorities of the towns 
and Provinces were in discord with each other. 
Moreover, the Count John, who had accepted 
the government of Gelders in March, 1578, 
succumbing under the weight of all these mis- 



William the Taciturn. 



221 



fortunes — being obliged " often to go to bed 
without his supper " for the reason that he had 
not the means of paying " the baker and the 
butcher" — retired to his possessions in Ger- 
many. William endeavored in vain to retain 
him. He could not bear the thought that his 
brother should abandon the Provinces, and he 
wrote to him these Christian words : " We must 
do the best we can, and believe, when such mis- 
fortunes happen, that God wishes to try us. If 
he sees that we do not lose courage, assuredly 
he will come to our help. Had we not confi- 
dently believed this, we would not have opened 
the dikes on a memorable occasion ; for it was an 
uncertain attempt, [allusion to the siege of Ley- 
den,] and a great misfortune for the poor people. 
And yet God blessed our enterprise. He will 
bless us again, for his arm is not yet shortened." 

. It was this faith in God that enabled the 
Prince to surmount all his discouragements 
and distresses. 

In the month of June, as if to put a climax 
to his misfortunes, Philip published against 
him a ban, of which the closing words were as 
follows : " We declare him a miserable hypo- 
crite, traitor, and miscreant, the enemy of our 



222 William the Taciturn. 

person and of this country. As such we banish 
him eternally, from our kingdom, interdicting 
all our subjects, whatever be their station, from 
communicating with him either openly or in 
secret, and from giving him food or drink or 
any other necessity of life. We permit all 
persons to injure him both in his goods and in 
his person. We denounce the said William of 
Nassau as an enemy of the human race, and 
we give his goods to all who shall be able to 
lay hold upon them. And if any one of our 
subjects, or any foreigner, has a heart suffi- 
ciently generous to rid us of this pest, to deliver 
him to us dead or alive, or to kill him, we will 
cause to be given to him as soon as the act is 
done twenty-five thousand crowns of gold. If 
such person has committed any crime, how- 
ever heinous it may be, we promise to pardon 
him, and if he is not already noble, we will 
ennoble him in recompense for his valor." 
Philip II. had thus renounced the hope of 
conquering the Taciturn by arms, and hence 
wished to assassinate him. This he regarded 
as the only means of overcoming the revolt. 

William answered the infamous edict of 
Philip with his famous " Apology," one of the 



William the Taciturn. 223 

most significant documents of the age, and 
which he caused to be forwarded to all the 
Courts of Europe. We can only allude to one 
or two points which he makes. He had hardly 
merited, he thought, the title of hypocrite. 
While he was the friend of the Spanish Govern- 
ment he had often forewarned it that by its 
course of persecution and treachery it was 
marching to its own ruin. Was this hypoc- 
risy ? And since he had become the enemy 
of the Court of Spain he had not shown any 
greater evidence of hypocrisy, unless it be 
hypocrisy to take up arms openly against a 
Government, to conquer its fortified places, and 
its armies. He insisted that Philip was not 
monarch of the Netherlands in the same sense 
as of Spain, but simply the heir of the ancient 
Dukes or Counts of Brabant and Holland, whose 
power was limited by constitutions as ancient as 
their rights. Now, Philip had tyrannically sup- 
pressed these constitutions, and had thus forti- 
fied, his hereditary rights. Could one therefore 
blame a people for resisting a power which had 
trampled under feet, " not only once but a 
million times/ 5 all the laws ? 

William spoke with disdain of the method 



224 William the Taciturn. 

adopted to terrify him, namely, the directing 
upon him the attention of all the murderers of 
the world. "I am in the hands of God," added 
he, with a pious boldness ; "my temporal goods 
and my life have long since been devoted to 
his service. He will dispose of them as he 
sees fit for his glory and my salvation." 

He declared with his usual disinterestedness, 
that if it could be made evident that his absence 
would be a benefit to the country, he was quite 
ready to go into exile. " Would to God ! " he ex- 
claimed in closing, " that my perpetual banish- 
ment, or even my death, might deliver you from 
your many calamities ! How consoling would 
be such a banishment ! how sweet such a death ! 
Why have I sacrificed my goods, my estates ? 
Was it to enrich myself? Why have I sacri- 
ficed my brothers ? Was it in hope of finding- 
new ones ? Why have I left my son so long in 
prison ? Can you give me another in his place ? 
Why have I freely rushed into so many dangers ? 
What recompense can I hope for my long serv- 
ices and my worldly ruin, which is now about 
complete ? For no other reason than for the 
joy of having, perhaps at the cost of my life, 
given to my country liberty ! If, therefore you, 



William the Taciturn, 225 

my masters Judge that my absence or my death 
can serve you, here I am ready to obey you. 
Give me your orders : send me to the ends 
of the earth, I will obey you. I offer you my 
head ; no prince nor monarch, but you alone 
have a right to dispose of it. Dispose of it, 
then, for your own good, for the benefit of your 
Republic ; but if you believe that I possess 
any experience or skill which can be useful to 
you, if my goods and my life seem to you of 
any value, I offer them anew to you to-day, to 
you and to my country." 

The Apology closed with the motto of the 
Prince of Orange : ye maintiendrai, u I will 
maintain" [the right] — a motto in perfect har- 
mony with his life and character. The docu- 
ment was formally addressed to the States- 
General. It was soon spread through Europe 
in manifold translations. 



226 William the Taciturn. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

Act of Abjuration — William accompanies the Duke of Anjou 
into the Provinces — His views of this Prince — Attempt on 
his life at Antwerp — He is severely wounded — Dangerous- 
ness of his condition — His recovery — Death of his wife 
Charlotte — His definitive appointment as Count of Hol- 
land — Xew plot against his life at Ghent — He thwarts the 
expedition of Alexander against this city. 

WHILE the war was continued without 
any decisive result, and was languish- 
ing from the exhaustion of both armies, a 
change of the greatest importance took place 
in the situation of William. Holland and Zee- 
land conferred upon him the supreme power. 
This he had already several times refused. But 
on the 5th day of July, 1581, "the chevaliers, 
the nobles, and the towns of Holland and Zee- 
land conjured him anew and solemnly to accept 
plenipotentiary authority as sovereign and chief 
of the country so long as the war should last!' 
The States-General inserted very lothly this 
latter clause, limiting the duration of the pow- 
ers of the Prince ; but it was well known that 



William the Taciturn. 227 

he would accept the sovereignty only on this 
condition. The Deputies of the two Batavian 
Provinces had categorically declared that they 
would have nothing to do with the Duke of 
Anjou, and that they never would chose any 
other chief than the Taciturn. The Duke, 
therefore, had to content himself with the 
supremacy of the other United Provinces, and 
William finally accepted the dignity that was 
urged upon him. 

On the 26th of July the representatives of 
the United Provinces, in session at the Hague, 
solemnly decreed the deposition of Philip II., 
and their own independence. This declara- 
tion, which was called the Act of Abjuration, 
affirmed that " when God chose a prince to 
govern a people, it was to protect the people 
from evil, as a good shepherd watches tenderly 
over his flock. God does not choose subjects 
for the advantage of the prince, but he chooses 
the prince for the benefit of his subjects, with- 
out whom there could not be a prince. If he 
violates the laws he deserves to be abandoned 
by the most humble of his subjects and to be 
degraded from the rank of prince." In this re- 
markable document popular right makes its first 



228 



William the Taciturn*. 



appearance in ancient Europe, when as yet it 
had scarcely escaped from the darkness of the 
Middle Ages. Unquestionably the Reforma- 
tion had fostered this spirit of liberty. The 
sovereignty of the conscience which it had 
boldly affirmed in the face of Rome was incom- 
patible with regal absolutism, and consti- 
tuted, in its eves the sole, inviolable divine 
right. 

However, notwithstanding the boldness of 
their principles, the States-General were not 
vet resolved to change the form of their govern- 
ment. They were satisfied with their historical 
institutions, and preferred that mingling of 
hereditary sovereignty and popular representa- 
tion to which they had been long accustomed. 
Philip II. had violated the laws of reason and 
the statutes of the country ; hence they de- 
posed him in order to elect in his place a new 
head of the State. 

By his paramount influence William induced 
the majority of the united Provinces to dismiss 
the Archduke Matthias, and to throw them- 
selves into the arms which the Duke of Anjou 
offered to them. " If the priest and the Levite,"' 
said he, in allusion to the refusal of the Queen 



William the Taciturn. 229 

of England and to the indifference of Germany, 
M pass by us with disdain, even when we have 
fallen into the hands of robbers, shall we then 
reject the aid which rhe Samaritan offers us 
because he does not belong to the same faith 
as the worthy fathers who have left us to 
perish ! " The character of the Duke was not at 
all calculated to inspire confidence. Too wor- 
thy a son of Catherine de Medicis, he had all 
her vices without her ability. He had made 
himself noted in an infamous court by the most 
shameful excesses, and was justly regarded as 
a prince without talent and without principles. 
The Taciturn knew this very well ; but he 
obeyed what he regarded as an imperious ne- 
cessity, and overcame his own repugnance and 
that of the States-General. The politician in 
this case threw into the background the Chris- 
tian ; his conscience was dominated by a de- 
sire which was patriotic and disinterested, 
without doubt, but yet unworthy of him and of 
his cause ; namely, that of succeeding at any 
price. The choice of such a man as the Duke 
of Anjou for sovereign is one of the gravest 
mistakes of the hero of the Netherlands. It 

was a moment of wavering in his great heart, 

15 



230 William the Taciturn. 

the fruits of which he soon after suffered, for 
God never blessed bad means. 

Nevertheless, under the pressure of some 
new successes of the Prince of Parma, the 
States-General, at the instance of William, 
concluded an arrangement with the Duke of 
Anjou, who was ready enough to sign whatever 
conditions they proposed to him. On the ioth 
of February, 1582, he came to the possession 
of his sovereignty. He landed at Flushing, on 
his return from England, whither he had been 
attracted by the hope of espousing Elizabeth 
and of thus sharing one of the mightiest thrones 
of Europe, while becoming himself the exclusive 
master of the Netherlands. 

He was received, on his arrival, by Orange, 
who had been awaiting him several days, at the 
head of a large deputation of the States-Gen- 
eral. The multitude hailed him with joyous 
acclamations, the magistrates of the city con- 
ferred honors upon him, and, after a week of 
festivities, he triumphantly pursued his journey 
to Antwerp, where was to take place the cere- 
mony of his installation as Duke of Brabant and 
Sovereign of the Netherlands. This ceremony 
took place in the midst of an immense throng 



William the Taciturn. 231 

of people, and with extraordinary state. The 
Duke, according to ancient usage, made oath 
to observe the Constitution of Brabant, and he 
raised a universal enthusiasm by adding thereto 
that he would pour out his blood to the last 
drop in defense of the liberties of the provinces. 

William, happy at these promises, indulged 
in the hope of a brighter future for his country ; 
and it was with joy, and under the influence of 
the most pleasant delusions, that he said to the 
new sovereign, while helping him to put on the 
ermine-bordered velvet mantle "which consti- 
tuted the traditional costume of the Dukes of 
Brabant : " I must be careful, Monseigneur, and 
adjust upon you very snugly this robe, so that 
no one will ever be able to take it from you." 
The Duke of Anjou manifested toward him a 
trust and an affection which deeply affected 
him ; he took them as a pledge of the good in- 
tentions of the Duke. At all events, the posi- 
tion which William had alongside of the Duke 
enabled him, as under the Archduke Matthias, 
to master the situation, and to repress any en- 
croachment or abuse of power. He accom- 
panied the Duke wherever he went, and figured 
in first rank on all occasions of state. He re- 



232 William the Taciturn. 

mained with him at Antwerp for several weeks, 
living in intimacy with him, and treated rather 
as a protector than as a lieutenant-general. 

It was during his stay in this city, and in the 
midst of the- stir of the public rejoicings, that 
William experienced the first effects of the ban 
hurled against him by Philip. 

On the 1 8th of March the Prince dined with 
a few friends and his son, the Count Maurice 
of Nassau, then fifteen years of age, in the man- 
sion he had been occupying since his arrival. 
The conversation had been very lively, and 
many incidents of the cruelties of the Spaniards 
in the Provinces were related. On rising from 
the table William prepared to leave, in order to 
spend the evening at the palace of the Duke of 
Anjou. As he entered into the ante-chamber 
a young man of vulgar mien insinuates himself 
among his servants and presents to him a peti- 
tion. The Taciturn, with his usual good nature, 
extends his hand to take it. At this moment 
the young man draws a pistol, and fires directly 
at his head. He was so close that the hair and 
beard of the Prince were set on fire by the 
flash. He remained standing for a moment, as 
if petrified by the explosion. Recovering his 



William the Taciturn. 233 

consciousness, and seeing the indignation of his 
attendants in their interest for him, and their 
ferocity against his assassin, he cried out : " Do 
not kill him ; I forgive him my death." This 
recommendation — sublime in such a moment — 
was not heard. Two gentlemen of his suite 
had already inflicted justice upon him, piercing 
him with their swords. 

The Prince, supported by his friends, re- 
paired to his chamber, where surgeons dressed 
his wound. The ball had penetrated below the 
right ear and, passing through the roof of the 
mouth, passed out under the left jaw, knocking 
out two teeth. Blood flowed very copiously, 
and death seemed inevitable. William expected 
h it himself, and, always oblivious of himself, was 
most concerned with the sad situation in which 
he would leave the young sovereign whose ele- 
vation was his own work, and for whom he felt 
a truly paternal interest. " Alas ! poor Prince," 
said he frequently, " how many difficulties thou 
wilt find upon thy path ! " The physicians be- 
sought him to be silent if he did not wish to 
lose every chance of recovery. He obeyed but 
partially ; it was impossible for him to remain 
inactive, and he frequently dictated and wrote 



234 William the Taciturn. 

letters on public affairs. So long as his 
heart could beat, his country could not be 
forgotten. 

The excitement of the- people of Antwerp on 
hearing of the crime just accomplished within 
their own walls was immense. The most hor- 
rible suspicions got into circulation. Some said 
that the Prince w r as dead, and it was added in 
whispering tones that, like Coligny, he had 
fallen a victim to the Medicis family ; the Duke 
of Anjou was said to have acted like his brother 
Charles IX., that is, to have drawn the great 
man who had given him his support into a snare, 
and to have ordered his assassination. William 
was obliged to contradict these rumors. He 
wrote to one of the chiefs of the city guards to 
beg him to announce to the people that he was 
still living, and he conjured them, should God 
take him away from the world, to remain calm 
and loyal to the Duke of Anjou. 

It w^as not long before the truth as to the 
assassination was found out. Thanks to the 
presence of mind and the firmness of the young 
"Maurice, all the papers which the murderer 
bore upon his person were seized and examined. 
They were all written in Spanish ; it was 



William the Taciturn. 235 

therefore manifest that, if there had been a 
plot, it was not France that had planned it. A 
Jesuit Catechism, a portfolio with letters of ex- 
change on Madrid, and some other objects 
found in the pockets of the assassin, indicated 
clearly enough who was to be regarded as the 
guilty party. It was soon discovered that 
Philip II. and the Inquisition had employed the 
arm of a fanatical merchant to put to death the 
unconquerable adversary of their bloody tyranny. 
The actual perpetrator of the deed was in the 
employ of a Spanish merchant of Antwerp, who 
had promised the King to kill William of Or- 
ange for eighty thousand ducats and one of the 
most coveted titles of the Spanish nobility. 
The assassin had been simply the executor of 
this ignoble contract, and the blind agent of his 
employer, who was himself too prudent to carry 
out the vile act with which he had charged him- 
self. His- accomplices were arrested, and they 
made the most ample confessions. The mer- 
chant, however, had taken the precaution to 
take refuge in the camp of Parma. 

The condition of the Taciturn was very 
alarming. But he did not any the less continue 
to manifest his characteristic greatness of soul. 



236 William the Taciturn. 

He dictated letters to the States-General, to 
set before them, as he thought for the last 
time, the course he regarded as most useful 
to the nation. The States-General replied 
to him by sending a deputation bearing to 
him the testimony of their grief and of their 
devotion. On the other hand, a day of solemn 
fasting and prayer was proclaimed at Antwerp. 
The population felt the need of humbling them- 
selves under the mighty hand of God, and of 
asking of him the restoration of him whom 
they regarded both as a savior and a father. 
Never " in the memory of man," says a recital 
of the times, " did one see such crowds in the 
churches, and so many tears in all eyes." 

In the mean time William was at the very 
gates of death. His wife and his sister (who 
was married to a German nobleman, the Count 
Schwartzburg) relieved each other day and 
night, never quitting his bedside. The Prince, 
despite his feebleness and the danger of his 
condition, wrote, on learning the conclusion of 
the trial of the two accomplices of his assassin, 
to his friend Marnix, who had had charge of the 
course of justice in this case, the following 
note : 



William the Taciturn. 237 

" Monsieur de Sainte-Aldegonde : I have 
heard that to-morrow is set for executing justice 
upon the two prisoners who are the accomplices 
of him who fired upon me. For my part, I very 
freely pardon them in so far as they have offended 
me ; if they have merited a severe and rigor- 
ous punishment, I beg you to be so good 
as to intercede with the magistrates that they 
may not subject them to great torture, but con- 
tent themselves, if they have merited it, with a 
speedy death. 

" Your friend and humble servant, 

" William of Nassau." 

This so touching and humane request saved 
the prisoners from horrible tortures. They 
were executed on the 28th of March. 

The month of April was passed amid the 
most agonizing alternations in his condition : the 
hemorrhage closed and recommenced turn by 
turn. In the end, however, the prayers of a whole 
nation were heard. The wound healed over ; and, 
after a rapid convalesence, the Prince repaired, 
early in May, to the great Cathedral of Antwerp, 
in the midst of a joyous and thankful multitude, 
to render thanks to God for his recovery, 



238 William the Taciturn. 

But this happy event was soon followed by a 
cruel loss. William was restored to life, as it 
were, only to see his wife replace him upon the 
death-bed. Exhausted by her protracted watch- 
ings, and broken down by the severe emotions 
through which she had passed, Charlotte of 
Bourbon was assailed by a violent fever, and, - 
on the 5th of May, 1582, she expired. The 
Prince, of whom, according to the words of John 
of Nassau, she had been " one of the greatest 
consolations," and to whom she was " exceed- 
ingly dear," was on the point of falling into a 
relapse. All who knew this excellent Princess 
participated in his affliction. His mourning 
was the mourning of a whole nation. 

Since the news of the attempted assassina- 
tion, the States-General of Holland and Zee- 
land had been in session, and had awaited with 
the greatest anxiety the final result of the 
wound of the Prince. When they learned of 
his restoration their joy was immense. The 
sufferings which he had just endured, and the 
fear they had entertained of losing him, had 
made them feel more than ever the inestimable 
worth of his service ; and under this state of 
feeling they offered anew to him the sovereignty 



William the Taciturn. 239 

which he had a year previously only provision- 
ally accepted. It had been formally settled, in 
the arrangement concluded with the Duke of 
Anjou, that the latter should never claim 
supreme power in Holland and Zeeland. These 
two Provinces had the privilege of forming a 
little state or free dukedom by itself. William, 
by a letter dated August 14, 1 582, accepted defi- 
nitively the dignity which he had until then re- 
fused, and allowed himself to be elected, under 
the title of Count, as hereditary chief of this 
state. His powers were limited by the privi- 
leges of the States-General, who regulated and 
voted the imposts, deliberated upon all meas- 
ures which " related to justice and policy," 
made laws, and declared war or peace. This 
constitution was very similar to that of the 
constitutional monarchies of Europe in our own 
day. The installation of the new Count was 
adjourned for awhile, after the preparation of 
the various documents necessary for this solem- 
nity. Circumstances never allowed it to take 
place. 

The Prince was present, about this period, 
at the solemn reception made to the Duke of 
Anjou, at Bruges, as Count of Flanders. Though 



240 William the Taciturn. 

consenting to become the sovereign of Holland 
and Zeeland, whose antipathy to Anjou he had 
not been able to overcome, William neglected 
no effort to assure to him the other Provinces. 
He came very near perishing also here, as at 
Antwerp, under the strokes of assassins whom 
the Spanish Government had set loose against 
him. In the midst of the popular festivities, an 
Italian and a Spaniard undertook to poison the 
two Princes. But they were arrested at the 
moment when they were making ready to real- 
ize their criminal purpose ; they confessed that 
Alexander of Parma had paid them to commit 
this double crime. One of them killed himself 
in prison, the other was sent to Paris and capi- 
tally punished. 

A month later the Duke of Anjou received 
at Ghent a welcome no less magnificent than in 
the other cities which he had already visited. 
This time his visit was troubled, not by a pair 
of assassins, but by a considerable army with 
which the Prince of Parma himself came to 
attack the troops which had escorted Anjou as 
Duke of Flanders. A bloody conflict took 
place under the walls of Ghent. William di- 
rected the operations of the patriot troops and 



William the Taciturn. 241 

forced the aggressors to withdraw. But for 
him Ghent, and the new sovereign it was wel- 
coming, would undoubtedly have fallen into the 
hands of Parma, who had captured several im- 
portant cities during the year, and had received 
fresh reinforcements from Spain and Italy. 



242 



William the Taciturn. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



Treason of the Duke of Anjou — Slight Conflict at Antwerp — 
Letter of William to the States-General, pleading for the 
Duke — William refuses the sovereignty of the Netherlands 
— His sojourn at Delft — Death of the Duke of Anjou — 
Assassination of the Prince of Orange by Balthazar Ge- 
rard — Antecedents and cunning of this man — Consequences 
of his crime — Character and genius of the Taciturn. 



ROM Ghent William of Orange returned 



with the Duke of Anjou to Antwerp. The 
new Sovereign of the Netherlands found here 
a crowd of French noblemen, who had come to 
offer him their homage and to increase his 
court. 

This set of madcaps conspired, in contempt 
of the most solemn engagements, against the lib- 
erty of the Provinces. They insanely thought 
of adding the Netherlands to France, of enrich- 
ing themselves by pillaging the chief cities, and 
of re-establishing in the territory the suprem- 
acy of the Pope. They succeeded without diffi- 
culty in inducing Anjou to enter into their 
design, by appealing to his vanity. It was un- 




William the Taciturn. 243 

worthy, said they, of the brother of Henry II., 
in a word, " of a son of France," to have such 
a limited authority, and to play the role of a 
statue or of a zero, like Matthias. 

Stung to the quick by these suggestions, the 
Duke, after a few days of reflection, proposed 
himself to his favorites the means of realizing 
their common hopes. It was essential, in his 
view, to invade simultaneously the most impor- 
tant cities of Flanders, such as Dunkirk, Bru- 
ges, Ghent, etc. He himself undertook the 
part of surprising Antwerp. After the capture 
of these strong places, the rest of the country 
would be easily subdued. 

The execution of this plan, which was adopted 
with enthusiasm, was fixed for the 15 th of Jan- 
uary, 1583. It succeeded at Dunkirk and at 
some other points, but at Bruges and Ant- 
werp it completely failed. It is in this latter 
city that the struggle was the most bloody. 
The Prince of Orange, blinded * by his senti- 
ments for the Duke of Anjou, had taken no 
measures for defeating the plot, which had been 

* " No man could overreach him, excepting only those to 
whom he gave his heart. He might be mistaken where he 
had confided, never where he had been distrustful or indiffer- 
ent. " — Motley. 



244 William the Taciturn. 

revealed and denounced to him in vain. Sad 
facts, however, soon unsealed his eyes to the 
reality of the plot. 

On the 17th of January, in the middle of the 
night, the shouts, " Up with the mass ! Health 
to tlte Duke of Anjou ! Slaughter ! slaughter ! " 
resounded in the streets of Antwerp. The cit- 
izens, awakened by this tumult, hastened out 
from their houses. At the sight of the French 
soldiery they comprehended their danger and 
rushed to arms, and within a few hours they 
had cut to pieces, or chased from within their 
walls their cowardly aggressors. The Duke 
and his bands fled away like marauders, and 
went into camp not far from the city. From 
this camp Anjou wrote, on the very day of his 
treason, to William and to the States-General, 
asking for the property and the prisoners which 
he had left in the city. The Taciturn, who, 
notwithstanding his indignation against Anjou, 
had already checked the citizens from pursuing 
their routed enemy, induced the States-General 
again to exercise indulgence, and to receive fa- 
vorably this request. And, more still, he in- 
duced them to send deputies to the Duke to 
make more ample arrangements, and even to 



William the Taciturn. 245 

bring about a reconciliation. William, fully 
convinced that there was no salvation for the 
Netherlands but in the support of France, 
wished to avoid, at any price, a final rupture 
with a man -who, though contemptible indeed, 
was still more dangerous as an enemy than as 
a friend. He explained publicly his view of 
the matter, in a letter addressed to the States- 
General, but intended rather for the nation at 
large, with whom the irritation against the Duke 
was extreme. 

He commenced by disclaiming the blame of 
which he himself had been the constant object, 
since the criminal attempt of Anjou. He said 
that it was impossible, even for a great poten- 
tate, possessed of abundant resources, to antic- 
ipate all events, and to succeed in all his under- 
takings. How, then, could one expect of him, 
who had not the means of giving a sufficient 
garrison to a single city, that he should be 
above the strokes of fortune, and in security 
against the mischances of war. He reminded 
the people that the States-General had care- 
fully deliberated on the nomination of the Duke 
of Anjou ; that the}' had been at full liberty 

not to elect him ; that he had assured them 

16 



246 William the Taciturn. 

several times of his devotion and of his con- 
currence, in case they should prefer to protect 
themselves without calling in the French prince. 
He, therefore, regarded it as unjust that he 
should be held entirely responsible where others 
were equally at fault. He did not try to pal- 
liate the crime of Anjou, or to deny that he had 
thereby forfeited all the rights conferred upon 
him by his treaty with the Provinces. But the 
situation of the country was such, that to refuse 
all agreement with him would be to drive him to 
hostility, and to give France as an auxiliary to 
Spain. Now, were the States-General in con- 
dition to sustain alone a double war against 
these two powerful nations ? He begged them 
to remember how difficult it was to raise troops, 
to find money to pay them, and to induce the 
cities to receive sufficient garrisons, and to es- 
tablish a council which could make itself obeyed. 
He alluded briefly to their divisions, to their 
mutual jealousy, and to their parsimony. He 
declared that he did not accuse those who ad- 
vised the Provinces to defend themselves with 
their own forces, since that was in fact his own 
sentiment ; but he added that it was to tempt 
God and not to confide in him, to undertake 



William the Taciturn. 247 

great affairs without having the means. In con- 
cluding, he reiterated, as he had done under 
other circumstances, that whatever might be the 
decision which the States-General might think 
proper to take, he would remain till his last 
breath in the service of his country. 

In harmony with these suggestions, the rep- 
resentatives of the United Provinces concluded 
a provisional arrangement with the Duke of 
Anjou, who, when he quit , the Netherlands, 
June 28th, 1583, in order to visit Paris, left the 
assurance that he would soon return and enter 
anew upon the sovereignty which he had for- 
feited by his odious conduct. 

William brought about this result at the ex- 
pense of his own popularity. The people could 
not pardon him for remaining a partisan of the 
Duke after having been his dupe, and the 
States-General of Holland and Zeeland re-ech- 
oed the popular discontent. They addressed 
to him, August 25th, a solemn remonstrance, 
expressing to him their intense aversion for the 
French Prince, and conjuring hirn to count 
rather upon the succor of the Almighty and 
upon the efforts of the nation itself. They 
urged him anew to accept the sovereignty of 



248 William the Taciturn. 

all the Provinces rather than to give it to stran- 
gers who were no less unworthy than perfid- 
ious. If he should consider this offer favorably, 
they would obligate themselves largely to aug- 
ment their annual contributions for the common 
defense. 

These propositions of the Holland Deputies 
were seconded a short time subsequently by the 
States-General of all the United Provinces, in a 
session held at Middelburg. Here, as always, 
the Prince of Orange declined the honor offered 
to him, and persisted in representing the Duke 
of Anjou as more capable than any one else of 
protecting the Netherlands and of maintaining 
their independence. " Never," added he, " will 
I give the King of Spain the chance of saying 
that I have taken the Provinces from him only 
to appropriate them to myself, and that I have 
had no other object in my whole life than to 
labor for my personal advancement." 

These scruples of William played finely into 
the hands of Alexander of Parma. While the 
patriotic party, disorganized and enfeebled by 
the treachery of Anjou, was endeavoring to 
restore itself to a solid basis, he succeeded in 
seizing upon several cities. He gained over by 



William the Taciturn. 249 

his machinations even the brother-in-law of 
Orange, the Count van der Berg, Governor of 
Gelders. Pushing forward his, diplomatic rather 
than military, successes, he was, in the spring of 
1 584, on the point of detaching from the Union 
of the Provinces its key-stone, the capital of 
Flanders, namely, the turbulent and powerful 
city of Ghent, whose inhabitants had lent an 
ear "to the honeyed song of the royalists," and 
had entered into negotiation with this cun- 
ning lieutenant of Philip II. Luckily, however, 
the exhortations and warnings of the Taciturn 
arrested them on the border of the precipice, 
and unsealed their eyes to the treachery which 
was on the point of delivering them over uncon- 
ditionally to the tyranny of Spain. Thanks to 
him, they broke off all relations with Alexander, 
and vowed to remain more faithful than ever 
to the national cause. 

While the agents of Spain were laboring in 
Gelders and Flanders for the disorganization 
of the patriotic party, William, not content 
with thwarting their designs, was endeavoring 
also to obtain effectual resources from the 
Court of France. The Duke of Anjou was to 
bring them with him, on his approaching return 



250 William the Taciturn. 



to the Netherlands. On the 19th of April, 
1584, the Commissioners of the States-General 
brought to William the most positive promises 
of speedy help ; and he was waiting their real- 
ization to commence a new campaign. In the 
mean time he was residing in the little. town 
of Delft, of the rural, quiet, and shady walks of 
which he was very fond. Here, surrounded 
by silence and the verdure of a bounteous 
nature, he was repairing his vitality in the 
midst of the comforts of domestic bliss, which 
were for his earnest and affectionate soul an 
indispensable necessity. One year previously 
(3d of April, 1583) he had married Louisa 
de Teligny, the widow of a nobleman of this 
name, and the daughter of his illustrious friend, 
Admiral Coligny. He was living with his 
new companion and numerous children* in 

* " William of Orange left twelve children. By his first wife 
Anne of Egmont, he had one son, Philip, and one daughter, 
Mary, afterward married to Count Hohenlo. By his second 
wife, Anna of Saxony, he had one son, the celebrated Maurice 
of Nassau, and two daughters, Anna, married afterward to her 
cousin, Count William Lewis, and Emilie, who espoused the 
Pretender of Portugal, Prince Emanuel. By Charlotte of 
Bourbon, his third wife, he had six daughters ; by his fourth, 
Louise de Coligny, one son, Frederic William, afterward Stadt- 
holder of the Republic in her most palmy days." — Motley. 



William the Taciturn. 251 

an antiquated two-storied brick .house, and was 
leading there the modest life of a simple citi- 
zen whose threshold is open to all comers. 

On the 8th of July, early in the morning, he 
received by a courier from France dispatches 
announcing to him the death of the Duke of 
Anjou, who had succumbed on the 10th of June, 
at Chateau Thierry, after terrible sufferings. 
The Prince read this message, and then imme- 
diately ordered the person w T ho brought it to be 
admitted into his chamber. This man, who 
gave his name as Francis Guion, entered the 
room, and, as he afterward confessed, experienced 
a strong temptation on seeing himself face to 
face with the Taciturn without guards and un- 
armed. Absorbed with the serious reflections 
suggested to him by the weighty news of which 
Guion had been the messenger, William of 
Orange did not observe his inward struggle. 
He demanded of him the details as to the sick- 
ness of the Duke, and after having learned all 
that he desired, dismissed him, giving him a 
sum of money for bringing the message. On 
this same day William was present at his usual 
place of public worship in the little church 
opposite his house. The next Tuesday, at half 



252 - William the Taciturn. 

past twelve o'clock, the Prince, supporting his 
wife upon his arm, and followed by the ladies 
and gentlemen of his family, was passing into 
the dining-room, when Guion presents himself* 
again and asks for a passport. The Princess, 
struck with the pallor and agitation of the indi- 
vidual, felt a vague disquiet. She asks trem- 
blingly of her husband who this stranger is, 
and adds in a low voice, " I never saw any one 
with such an evil-boding look." William, per- 
ceiving no ground for the fears of his wife, re- 
plies unconcernedly, " It is a man seeking a 
passport," and he orders one to be immediately 
prepared for him. 

During the dinner he conversed with his 
ordinary serenity and good humor. 

At two o'clock the guests arose from the 
table. The Prince went out, the first, from the 
dining-room, which was situated on the ground- 
floor, intending to repair to his private apart- 
ment. He commenced the ascent of the dark 
wooden stairway which conducted thither. Sud- 
denly a man, concealed behind the steps, springs 
out and rushes upon him, discharging a pistol 
directly into his breast. Struck by three balls, 
one of which passed entirely through him, the 



William the Taciturn. 253 



Taciturn exclaimed, in falling into the arms of 
his friends, who had hastened to him on hearing 
the explosion : " O my God, have mercy upon 
*my soul! My God, have mercy upon this' poor 
people ! " 

He uttered these words in French, and with a 
dying voice. However, when his sister, a mo- 
ment afterward, asked him if he confided his 
soul to Jesus, he had still strength enough to 
answer, "Yes." 

This was his last word. A few moments 
after he expired in the arms of his wife, who 
had already seen her father and her first hus- 
band killed in a similar manner at the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew. It was in the dining-room, 
whither he had been borne, that Louise de 
Coligny closed the eyes of the great man whose 
virtues and affection had consoled her for all 
her griefs, and had permitted her to enjoy again 
a period of happiness.* 

* " In person Orange was above the middle height, perfect- 
ly well made and sinewy, but rather spare than stout. His 
eyes, hair, beard, and complexion were brown. His head 
was .small, symmetrically shaped, combining the alertness and 
compactness characteristic of the soldier, with the capacious 
brow furrowed prematurely with the horizontal lines of thought 
denoting the statesman and the sage." — Motley. 



254 William the Taciturn. 

The assassin had fled away immediately after 
accomplishing his horrid purpose. But he was 
seized at the moment when he was crossing the 
ramparts of the city. He confessed his crime, and 
the motives which had induced him to commit it. 

He was a native of Franche-Comte, educated 
in hatred to Protestantism, and not less devoted 
to the King of Spain than to the Romish 
Church. His real name was Balthazar Gerard. 
He had cherished long since an " inveterate 
desire," to use his own words, of killing the 
Prince of Orange, whom he regarded as a 
" pestilence, the contagion of which infected all 
who were so unhappy as to be exposed to its in- 
fluence." He communicated his intentions to 
the Superior of the Jesuit College of Treves, who 
promised to him, in case he should lose his life 
in his undertaking, the happiness and the glory 
of the greatest martyrs. He then put himself 
into relations with Alexander of Parma, who, 
after having become satisfied of his shrewdness 
and daring, accepted his proposals, and declared 
to him that, in case he succeeded, either he or 
his family should receive the splendid recom- 
penses promised in the royal edict which de- 
clared the Taciturn an outlaw. 



William the Taciturn. 255 

Thus encouraged, Gerard set out for Delft 
about the middle of April. He introduced him- 
self to the Prince of Orange under the assumed 
name of Francis Guion, representing himself as 
the son of a Calvinist of Besangon recently 
immolated because of his faith. He declared 
himself firmly attached to the Reformation, and 
asked to be permitted to enter the service of 
William. The Taciturn procured admission for 
him into the suite of Noel de Caron, who held 
an office under the States-General in the Court 
of the Duke of Anjou. Hindered in his pur- 
poses by being unexpectedly removed from the 
presence of William on the departure of Anjou, 
the Catholic assassin took advantage of the 
death of the French Prince to gain admission 
again to the presence of William ; he took upon 
himself the duty of bearing to Holland this 
important news. This event favored only too 
much the crime which he was meditating. 
Even the charity of his victim contributed to 
the success of his horrible project. The sum 
of money which the Prince of Orange had 
generously given him the day of his arrival 
served for the purchase of the arms where- 
with the murder was consummated. 



256 - William the Taciturn. 

The judges found no punishment sufficiently 
cruel for the wretch who had assassinated the 
father of the nation ; and the Taciturn was no 
longer there to plead, as he had so often done, 
the cause of clemency and moderation. 

Gerard underwent the most atrocious tor- 
ments.* The Prince of Parma wrote to his 
sovereign that the " poor man " had been exe- 
cuted, but that his father and his mother were 
still living, and he supplicated his Majesty to 
accord to them the recompense merited by the 
noble action of their son. Philip II. kept his 
word : the parents of the assassin received pat- 
ents of nobility and the estates which Orange 
possessed in Franche-Comte. These titles and 
these lands remained in the hands of the Gerard 
family up to the time of the Union of Franche- 
Comte with France in 1674. At this time a 

* " The sentence pronounced against the assassin was exe- 
crable — a crime against the memory of the great man whom it 
professed to avenge. It was decreed that the right hand of 
Gerard should be burned of! with a red-hot iron, that his flesh 
should be torn from his bones with pincers in six different 
places, that he should be quartered and disemboweled alive, that 
his heart should be torn from his bosom and flung in his face, 
and that, finally, his head should be taken off. . . . The sen- 
tence was literally executed." — Motley. This punishment 
was only too much in harmony with the general spirit of the 
age. — Tr. 



William the Taciturn. 257 

French Governor tore to pieces these infamous 
documents, and trampled them in the dust. 

The death of the Prince of Orange plunged 
the United Provinces into the deepest grief. 
u Even the little children/' says an eye-witness 
of the events, "went about weeping in the 
streets." And, in fact, who could have been 
more worthy than the Taciturn of the tears of 
a whole nation ! During his entire life he had 
struggled and suffered for the emancipation of 
his country. Neither the power nor the wiles 
of the oppressors, neither the feebleness nor 
the dissensions of the oppressed, neither the loss 
of his fortune nor of his blood relatives, neither 
his multiplied defeats, nor treasons of friends, 
nor exile, nor the blows of Spanish emissaries — 
nothing could arrest him, for a period of eight- 
een years, from the steady and patient accom- 
plishment of his work. His reliable and pro- 
found insight into things, the nobleness and 
the moderation of his character, his rare elo- 
quence, his unwearied devotion and persever- 
ance, and, in fine, his political genius, which was 
even greater than his military talents, caused him 
to triumph over all obstacles. His sincere piety 
sustained him in all his trials, and gave him 



258 William the Taciturn. 

that serenity of soul and that forgetfulness of 
himself, which had never failed him from the 
time of his conversion. A few days before the 
close of his life he uttered to his friend Alde- 
gonde these beautiful words, which perfectly 
characterize himself: " Sainte-Aldegonde, let us 
suffer ourselves even to be trodden upon, pro- 
vided only that we may thereby be able to pro- 
mote the Church of God." 

At the time of his death all the Netherlands, 
with the exception of the Walloon Provinces, 
Artois and Hainaut, had shaken off the yoke 
of Spain, and the Reformed religion as well as 
civil liberty were prospering in them. Their 
union rested upon him as the corner-stone. But 
it fell apart with his death. One year after the 
sad catastrophe which had snatched him, at the 
age of fifty-one, in the very flower of his man- 
hood, from his glorious mission, there remained 
only seven Provinces, in the place of fifteen, to 
continue the war of liberation. 

These seven Provinces, all of them in the 
North, grouped themselves around Maurice of 
Nassau, the second son of William, and a more 
skillful captain than his father. The struggle was 
still continued, during two generations, before 



William the Taciturn. 259 

Spain gave up her ancient prey and consented to 
recognize the Dutch Republic. It was only at 
the peace of Westphalia, in 1648, that, risen, as 
it were, from the bosom of the waters, the new 
State, whose maritime power and commercial 
prosperity had attained to marvelous propor- 
tions, forced its ancient masters, now degener- 
ated and conquered, to sanction, with the rest of 
Europe, its institutions and its independence. 

William the Taciturn was interred at Delft 
on the 3d of August, 1584.* The gratitude of 
his fellow-citizens has greeted to his memory in 
the new church of this city a magnificent tomb, 
upon which is seen, in reposing posture, a life- 
size statue of the Liberator of Holland, having 
at his feet, as the guardian of his last sleep, the 
faithful dog which saved his life in the previ- 
ously-mentioned nocturnal surprise by the min- 
ions of Alva. 

* On the day of his assassination William wore, according 
to Motley, a wide-leaved, loosely-shaped hat of dark felt, 
with a silken cord around the crown. A high ruff encircled 
his neck, while a loose surcoat of gray frieze cloth over a tawny 
leather doublet, with wide-slashed underclothes, completed his 
costume. This whole dress is yet to' be seen at the Hague. 



THE END. 



6* ^ 



